Links » Crème » Top-of-the-Week Links: “Gay” definition omitted, iPad 3s don’t cause Apple store riots, and China is apparently an A cup, breast-wise
Links » Crème » Top-of-the-Week Links: “Gay” definition omitted, iPad 3s don’t cause Apple store riots, and China is apparently an A cup, breast-wise |
- Top-of-the-Week Links: “Gay” definition omitted, iPad 3s don’t cause Apple store riots, and China is apparently an A cup, breast-wise
- Top 10 Search List (July 23)
- Today’s China Readings July 23, 2012
| Posted: 23 Jul 2012 05:00 AM PDT
The Olympics begin this week. Bet you forgot, huh? Be reminded over links. New Chinese dictionary leaves out alternate definition of "comrade" as meaning "gay": "The newly revised sixth edition of the Contemporary Chinese Dictionary has 69,000 entries, 13,000 Chinese characters and more than 3,000 new phrases. // They include internet slang such as 'geili' – meaning awesome – and such non-Chinese expressions as PM2.5, which refers to a pollution indicator for particulate matter. // But 'tongzhi' – in colloquial Chinese the equivalent of 'gay' as in 'homosexual' – is not among them. // Linguist Jiang Lansheng, one of the compilers of the dictionary, said in a Chinese television interview: 'We knew about the usage but we can't include it.' // 'You can use the word whichever way you like, but we won't put it into a standard dictionary because we don't want to promote these things. We don't want to draw attention to these things.'" [BBC] Stories that are uplifting: happy Apple customers pick up their pre-ordered iPad About that third Chinese veto of a UN Security Council resolution on Syria: "Britain said it was 'appalled,' and ambassador Mark Lyall Grant singled out Moscow and Beijing for having 'chosen to put their national interests ahead of the lives of millions of Syrians.' // Curiously, you won't find many at China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs who disagree with that assessment. Indeed, China has its own interests at heart…. China's actions on Syria must be understood as part of a growing sense in Beijing that its world view is under assault from the West. // …So how far will China's support for Assad extend? China doesn't go for underdogs, so expect a parting of ways as Assad reaches his seemingly inevitable end, much as China did in the case of Libya." [Evan Osnos, New Yorker] A 19-year-old Chinese American girl was in Aurora for Batman's opening night, but not in the same theater where the shooting occurred. She wrote down her thoughts on guokr.com, as translated by China Hush: "There are a lot of gun crimes in the United States. There are no requirements for buying guns. Just have to be over 18. Everyone says the United States a safe place, I also said the same. I came to America for 10 years already, I lived in Colorado for 10 years. I am 19, it is first time in my life encountering this kind of thing. I often go there to watch movies, we also lived around that theater with my family. Therefore I was never scared before. So naïve, thought it never would happened to me. Now, it happened, I am scared. I cried, because I knew how important my live is now." [China Hush] A bit late to this piece, but it's great. "Apparently, to [Carmelo Anthony], Jeremy Lin is not in the fraternity. Or at least, Lin's place in it is dubious enough that he has not earned the omerta that every other player gets. Anybody wanna try to convince me it has zero to do with Lin being Asian-American? Because, and let's cut to the quick, Carmelo Anthony never ever would've made that remark about a black NBA player's contract, and I doubt that he ever would've said it about a white player's, either… // Could it be that Dolan thought the nice, quiet, devout Christian Taiwanese kid would be too cowed by The Great Man to play hardball over money? Could it be that he thought he owned Lin, had made him, and became furious when Lin refused to behave like it? Could it be that he expected Lin to be more – ethnic stereotype alert – submissive?" [Devin Gordon, GQ] Today in dumb proposed US bills: "Congress is considering a bill that would revoke the visas of nearly all the 800 or so Chinese journalists in the U.S…. // But some American journalists have voiced concerns that the proposed law would cast doubt on America's commitment to freedom of the press and risk sparking a visa war with China, which could result in the expulsion of Americans working for commercial media in China and impair American press coverage of China." [Law and Border] In which the artist was not actually at the hearing: "Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist who has emerged as one of the government's most nettlesome and high-profile critics, has lost his appeal of a $2.4 million tax evasion case that was widely seen as an effort to derail his antigovernment activism." [NY Times] Chinese students in America. "This writer has spent the summer this year rooming with a Chinese student in Beijing , whom I'll call Abby. She complained about the same issues the Elisabeth Gareis survey noted. She finds American personalities to be very abrasive, blunt and outspoken: // 'At some point America disappoints me. My friends and I say that American girls have queen personality. They act like a queen. Very self-confident and say whatever they want.'" [Danwei] Michael Phelps would be wise to keep quiet, because it's likely Ronda Rousey could beat him up. "Rousey said while at a party for all American Olympians, the athletes happily mingled together. NBA players hung with the rest of the group, but Phelps had his own area that was just for his group. // 'These NBA players are a bigger deal than this guy, and they're hanging out with us. We're teammates. We're not a bunch of groupies. Come hang out with us,' Rousey said." [Fourth-Place Medal, Yahoo] Promise in Pyongyang, a Chinese-North Korea production interlude: Finally… Sammy Lee, 91, first Asian American gold medalist. [Disgrasian] Shanghai Shenhua vs. Manchester United on Wednesday: buy tickets here. "Panic at the Top": a South China Morning Post editorial about the 18th Communist Party congress, via a site that's not SCMP because SCMP uses a paywall. [Central Tibet Administration] Finally, finally… In case you can't see the legend in the bottom left corner, China is an A cup. [yarkko, Target Map] |
| Posted: 23 Jul 2012 03:53 AM PDT
1. 北京最强暴雨37人遇难 Běijīng zuì qiáng bàoyǔ sānshíqī rén yùnàn – Online users are checking news updates on the rain storm that pelted down on Beijing last Saturday, which is said to be the biggest rainfall the region has had in 61 years. According to the latest information provided by Chinese media, 37 have died from the storm, 7 still remain missing, and more than 60,000 people have been evacuated from their homes due to flooding. Here's the story in English. 2. 派出所长殉职 pàichūsuǒzhǎng xùnzhí – Li Fanghong, Superintendent of Yanshan District Public Security Bureau, died on duty while saving 63 stranded civilians from Fenghuangting village during the rain storm last Saturday. Here's the story in Chinese. 3. 华人新首富 huárén xīn shǒufù – Li Jiacheng, Hong Kong business magnate and formerly the richest man of Chinese descent, has recently transferred one-third of his family trust rights from his younger son Li Zhekai, to his eldest son Li Zheju. Li Zheju now succeeds his father as the new wealthiest Chinese man, with two-third of the Li family trust rights under his possession. The remaining one-third remains under the control of the now 84 year-old Li Jiacheng. Here's the story in Chinese. 4. 妈妈的油茶果 māma de yóucháguǒ – Not too long ago, Headmaster of Peking University Zhou Qifeng attracted significant public attention for kowtowing his mother at her 90th birthday celebration. Zhou is attracting media attention once more for his great demonstrations of filial love by having publicized a song he had written for his mother called "Mother's Camellia Fruit" yesterday during the cross straits headmasters' conference held at Nanjing University. Zhou had prepared the single on a CD as a gift for the Headmaster of the City University of Hong Kong. Here's the story in Chinese. 5. 章子怡 撒贝 Zhāng Zǐyí Sǎ Bèi – Popular actress Zhang Ziyi is rumored to be dating CCTV host Sai Beining. According to Chinese entertainment media, Sai had recently flew into Guangzhou to visit Zhang on her film set for the movie "The Grand Master," and was acting very flirtatious with her. Here's the story in Chinese. 6. 救猪身亡 jiù zhū shēnwáng – A resident farmer of the Liangshan autonomous district leapt into a cesspool to save a pig that had fallen in, three of his family members leapt in soon after to save the first man from drowning. Sadly none of them climbed back out alive due to the poisonous gas emitted from the cesspool. Here's the story in Chinese. 7. 黄榕 Huáng Róng – Hong Kong entertainer Huang Rong recently exposed to entertainment media that she had been secretly dating actor and singer Edison Chan between year 2003 to 2005.Edison Chan is best known for the disastrous leakage of his bedroom photos with numerous Hong Kong female celebrities a couple of years back. Here's the story in Chinese. 8. 丁关根 Dīng Guāngēn Former member of the political committee of CPC Central Committee Ding Guan'gen passed away in Beijing yesterday at 83 years of age. Here's the story in Chinese. 9. 泸州洪水 Lúzhōu hóng shuǐ – Beijing was not the only city that drowned under excessive amounts of precipitation last week. The city of Luzhou in Sichuan province experienced the strongest rainfall in the past century last Saturday, causing severe flooding in parts of the city. Here's the story in Chinese. 10. 浙大校长 zhèdà xiàozhǎng – The Headmaster of Zhejiang University was caught on photo playing card games on his personal PC during the headmasters conference held in Nanjing University yesterday. Here's the story in Chinese.        |
| Today’s China Readings July 23, 2012 Posted: 22 Jul 2012 04:58 PM PDT The big news is the flooding in Beijing over the weekend. So far the government has announced 37 deaths but given reports of devastation in parts of the Fangshan District in southwest Beijing the death toll may rise. Economic damage estimates have already passed 10 Billion RMB and are likely to increase as well. The government announced that the rainfall was the most in 60 years in the city proper and in 500 years in the Fangshan district. I suspect they do not have good records going back 500 years, so the "500 years" claim is probably an indication that things are quite bad in Fangshan and this is a way the government will argue they can not be blamed as it was such an unprecedented natural disaster. CCTV has posted aerial footage of some of the devastation in Fangshan here. The narration is in Chinese. At minute 2 you see an almost 1 km long flooded stretch of the Jinggang highway where some on Sina Weibo said at least 100 cars, trucks and buses were submerged. At about 4:15 you can see how mountainous parts of the Fangshan District are. Fangshan's most famous area is the Peking Man site, and there are parts that are so rural and poor that they make Appalachia look almost like Westchester County. Fangshan is a stark reminder of the close proximity of the first and third worlds in China, and given the topology, the deforestation and the poor infrastructure in parts of Fangshan things could really be quite bad there. Let's hope not, but if there are significant deaths and damage Beijing is going to have a hard time covering up the news. The Wall Street Journal reports on the reaction on social media to the flooding in Anger Swells After Floods Kill At Least 37 in Beijing, writing that there was much criticism directed at Beijing's overwhelmed sewer system: Rapid urbanisation has outpaced basic infrastructure development, as the Global Times points out: Beijing's decades' old drainage system is not suitable for current requirements, especially as heavy rain is more common now, said experts Sunday. "The capital's drainage network is already outdated, although a lot of repair work has been done to maintain it," said Zhang Junfeng, founder of the non-government water resource watchdog Happy Water Journeys. "The capital's drainage system could be among the most advanced across the country, but it isn't on a par with some developed countries, where the systems are designed according to a much higher standard," said Dai Shenzhi, a professor at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at Tongji University in Shanghai. Overhauling the entire network may be unfeasible, as it will take time and an enormous injection of cash. More urban development increases the risk of flooding, as there is less natural vegetation to absorb rain. It would be much more feasible to allocate areas of wetland to be used as overspills to guard against floods, Dai said. Echoing Dai's views, Zhang pointed out however that "the nation's obsession with rapid development has many local governments paying little attention to building wetlands, as it won't result in economic benefits." Given the insufficient basic urban infrastructure in most China cities, could Michael Pettis have too narrow a definition of "infrastructure"? From his most recent newsletter: …the economic value of infrastructure in China, which is based primarily on the value of labor it saves, is a fraction of the value of identical infrastructure in the developed world. It makes no economic sense, in other words, for China to have levels of infrastructure and capital stock anywhere near that of much richer countries since this would represent wasted resources – like exchanging cheap labor for much more expensive laborsaving devices. Beijingers certainly expect to have levels of infrastructure near that of "much richer countries". The government's initial response was seen by many as almost incompetent. Some Beijing residents rose to the occasion, helping those stranded Saturday night with lodging or free rides. People will tolerate rampant corruption when the economy is doing well and the government delivers the goods, but the economy is struggling and the floods may have significantly damaged the credibility of the Beijing Municipal Government. It is one thing when a disaster happens in distant provinces and rural areas, quite another when one hits the capital city. Since the legendary Yu the Great Chinese have associated flood control with dynastic legitimacy, so expect the central leadership to be very concerned about the response to this disaster. 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. Thousands of people in Fangshan district are counting the costs of the flood, with over 20,000 displaced and many more awaiting help from local authorities. Rescue operations were ongoing in the district as of last night. Fangshan's Hebei township saw the heaviest deluge of rain for 500 years, flood control authorities said.Zhang Yong, leader of Blue Sky Rescue Team, was involved in rescuing around 150 people from the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway trapped under a railway bridge."The water was almost five meters deep, submerging over 100 cars in over 1,000 square meters of water. We rescued the trapped people and brought them to safety," said Zhang. The roof of a storage building at a construction site in Zaolinzhuang village, Zhangjia township, was toppled by strong winds, killing two workers Saturday afternoon. Another person, also in Tongzhou, was killed after being struck by lightning. Two people died and one was injured after a landslide Saturday evening engulfed a small store in Shijingshan district. Drivers who received parking fines after being forced to abandon their cars on Saturday during the downpour will not have to pay up, Beijing government announced Sunday night. North Korea said it is reviewing the "nuclear issue" to counter the U.S., days after Kim Jong Un consolidated his power by taking the nation's top military rank and removing the army chief. 随即，福建、云南等地警方相继公布辖内票据大案告破，涉案金额200多亿元。积弊已久的票据市场正迎来一轮集中打击的风暴。 Over the next 50 years, Mr. Schram, who died on July 8 in France at 88, completed a seminal biography of Mao just before the disasters of the Cultural Revolution, and spent much of the rest of his life translating into English exhaustive volumes of Mao's words, in the process shedding critical light on a rapidly changing China…To other China scholars, Mr. Schram provided cleareyed analysis of Mao at a time when many people were eager to reduce him to either an evil dictator or a visionary hero. Mr. Schram's works, they say, are touchstones in the study of how Mao adapted Marxism for consumption by one of the world's oldest cultures. This week on Sinica, Chinese economic growth is on the rocks, ASEAN tensions are breaking through the facade of East-Asian political unity, a major Chinese telecom company is implicated in an international trade scandal, and man-eating fish have escaped into the wilds of Guangxi, prompting a profusion of local get-rich-quick schemes and threatening our plans to take a break from it all with a swimming vacation in southern China. disappointing how much major media coverage authoritarian apologists get. Good for Fallows for asking some tough questions. mainstream US media is too worried about balance when they really should be calling out the bullshit However, judging from sentiments on China's social media, New Oriental still gets high marks at home. Many China-based observers see an opportunity to scoop up shares of a Chinese blue chip company on the cheap. Liu Shengjun (@刘胜军改革), a columnist for the Financial Times' Chinese edition, tweeted on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter, "Great time to buy up New Oriental at the bottom." [1] The artist and activist insists that the case against him is politically motivated and says he plans to continue to challenge the government's charge Sany Heavy Industry Co. (600031), China's biggest machinery maker, postponed a $2 billion share sale in Hong Kong after struggling to attract investors, two people with knowledge of the matter said. love the economists and their long-term prescriptions// a brave call. could be right, short china trade seems crowded, govt could squeeze hard with a few policy announcements// indigenous system// more speculation on the possible impact of the bloomberg story on xi jinping. funny how all these "experts" assume the story was planted by a xi enemy. i have a high level of confidence that is not the case in this story. even Professor Wang Xiaolu talking about the need to be ready to use force over the Diaoyu Islands and S China Sea, if the other side makes the first move/breaks the status quo. SO INSPIRED was China's health minister, Chen Zhu, by a new push to reform the country's dysfunctional health-care system that he wrote a poem. "Wind and thunder move across the country, health reform brings good tidings," read the first lines of the paean, dutifully printed on the front page of his ministry's newspaper. But few share Mr Chen's optimism. The latest phase of China's health-care reforms could prove difficult, as hospitals and doctors are asked to end their financial dependence on medicine sales. The wind and thunder could drown out the good tidings AFTER a growing number of attacks on medical staff in China, doctors and nurses are finding hospitals increasingly unsafe. According to figures from the Ministry of Health, more than 17,000 "incidents" aimed at hospitals and their staff occurred in 2010, up from around 10,000 five years earlier. In a recent editorial, the Lancet, a medical journal published in Britain, warned bluntly that "China's doctors are in crisis." did Chinese translators invent the word oceanaut? and has James Cameron's network been hacked yet?// A fish farm is seen in the waters at Meiji Reef of South China Sea on July 22, 2012. There are nearly a score of fishermen working at the farm regularly. Beijing News Page 1 on the floods Justin Lin Yifu says the next round of stimulus will exceed Keynesianism// A Chinese central bank adviser predicted the nation's expansion may cool to 7.4 percent this quarter, adding to concern that the world's second-biggest economy has yet to bottom out. Bank of America Corp. has stepped in to defend China's second-quarter economic-growth data after analysts from Barclays Plc to Mizuho Securities Co. said the figures may be overstated. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s Tmall online shopping unit aims to add more overseas retailers as demand for U.S.-branded goods from its users in China increases. Chinese companies making foreign acquisitions must obey market principles, follow "international rules of the game" and play down national interest, the nation's foreign-exchange regulator said. But there's an irony in here for the United States, too. Its new animating concept for the Navy and the Air Force is to be able to stop any adversary from pushing ships, subs, jets and bombers away from its shores or its skies. The number-one way most adversaries do that: missiles. If China reads the revamped U.S. missile shield as a provocation that requires a new wave of missile advancement, that's going to make the Navy and Air Force's job more complicated. (Complicated isn't the same as impossible, though.) China may not be the only nation locked into faulty defense logic. 【多维新闻】左派代表吴法天被群殴一事的最新进展是，四川电视台记者周燕19日通过微博平台发道歉信，被打吴法天则在晚间时候以长博文回应。然由此事挑起的公众对网络暴力的挞伐声却仍在蔓延。其中最引人关注的，当属中共党报以正能量对抗暴力，及其首次应和互联网用语将"美分"作为"五毛"的对立面提出来的做法。 Authorities in Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong province, said Sunday that they have discovered mildew contamination in some infant formula products during an ongoing dairy safety overhaul. But it is midsummer in Beidaihe, which means one thing: Communist Party elders and their families are congregating here, about 180 miles east of Beijing, to swim and dine and gossip — and to shape the future of the world's most populous nation. from early June, background for the NYT article on Beidaihe// Demonstrators also driven by increasing frustration with Hanoi's one-party government over human rights violations Southeast Asian states sought to save face on Friday with a call for restraint and dialogue over the South China Sea, but made no progress in healing a deep divide about how to respond to China's growing assertiveness in the disputed waters. China's powerful Central Military Commission has approved the formal establishment of a military garrison for the disputed South China Sea, state media said on Sunday, in a move which could further boost tensions in already fractious region.。。 Departments at different levels "should have a clear understanding [of current situation], hold back from easing regulations on property markets,.. and avoid any rebound in housing price." 全市最大降雨点房山区河北镇为460毫米，接近500年一遇； 2005 report. Rupert Murdoch made a bad deal with Ding Guangen's son// Ding Guangen, a former chief of propaganda for the ruling Communist Party who oversaw party control of media and the arts in the 1990s, has died at age 83. Many volunteered to offer rescue, helping drag vehicles out of flooded areas and transporting passengers back home by individual means. Xinhua on problems in Beijing's sewer system foreigner swimming in the floods. guess he wants hepatits and more aerial video of floods in Beijing, minute 2 or so you can see 1 km or so of the flooded jinggang highway, where some on weibo said 100 cars or more were submerged, with occupants. no confirmation yet. at about 4:15 you can see how mountainous Fangshan is, and a flooded river near the Fangshan/Hebei border QQ News special site about the Beijing floods Nearly 60,000 people evacuated from their homes, Hu Yongqi and Cui Jia report in Beijing…The 20-hour storm that hit Beijing on Saturday claimed the lives of 37 people — 25 of the deaths were caused by drowning…Millions of people across the capital were hit by the deluge and thousands were evacuated from their homes. The flooding caused losses of at least 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion), according to the Beijing municipal government….The southwestern district of Fangshan was the hardest hit. Of the 56,933 people evacuated in the city, 20,990 came from Fangshan. There were two landslides in the district…The rainfall reached 460 millimeters in the district, the highest ever recorded, according to the government.In the rest of Beijing, the average was 170 mm, the highest since 1951. The deaths of more than three dozen people in Beijing as a result of heavy rains on Saturday have prompted public expressions of grief and anger and led some in China to question how a city lauded for its shiny new infrastructure and rapid modernization could fail so tragically in the face of bad weather. At home in Beijing, we only drink and cook with bottled or purified water. Air purifiers hum at home. My children wear protective face masks outdoors when the pollution spikes. About a year ago, teachers at my son's school began expressing their approval when he wore a mask — they know the air is bad, informed partly by recent microblog campaigns like the one Sharon described. But masks are not a long-term solution for the country. Neither is leaving. Citic Securities (6030) Co., China's largest brokerage by market value, agreed to buy Credit Agricole SA (ACA)'s Asian CLSA unit for $1.25 billion. Titan, its founder Tsoi Tin Chun and two other executives are responsible for 1.48 billionyuan ($232 million) of unauthorized guarantees by subsidiaries of Titan Group Investment Ltd., Warburg Pincus affiliate Saturn Storage Ltd. said in its lawsuit with Hong Kong's High Court yesterday. In contrast, Cheng's headquarters in Qingdao had only nine workers. Cheng refused to be interviewed, while his employees in Qingdao said Chen's representatives were on an inspection tour to Hawker Beechcraft, and negotiations with the company were going on.
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