Links » Cream » Photo: Taxi Driver, by Mark Hobbs
Links » Cream » Photo: Taxi Driver, by Mark Hobbs |
- Photo: Taxi Driver, by Mark Hobbs
- Ai Wei Wei, The Dangerous
- Child Protesters Reap Success For Migrant Workers
- Report Shows Foxconn Conditions Improving
- Netizen Voices: Power Cut at Indie Film Fest
- Ministry of Truth: Anti-Japanese Protests
- Advice for Gu Kailai: Lose Weight to Leave Jail
- Word of the Week: Great, glorious and correct
- The Daily Twit – 8/22/12: The End of iGuilt, Pollution Tax, and a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- Foxconn Labor Standards Progress Report
- China Announces Plan to Cut Energy Consumption
- Photo: china_changsha, by adam coster
- Chinese Cities Pledge to Boost Spending, but Will They?
- The Rise of China: Been There, Already Read That
| Photo: Taxi Driver, by Mark Hobbs Posted: 22 Aug 2012 10:03 PM PDT  Taxi Driver © Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| Posted: 22 Aug 2012 08:26 PM PDT Mark Stevens profiles Ai Wei Wei for Smithsonian Magazine's September issue, and asks whether the dissident artist "is more than just a contemporary phenom":
Ai's work will be on display at Washington D.C.'s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden from early October through February 2013, his second show in the American capital this year. See also reviews in The New York Times and The Guardian of Ai Wei Wei: Never Sorry, the documentary film by Alison Klayman that premiered in late July. © Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| Child Protesters Reap Success For Migrant Workers Posted: 22 Aug 2012 06:37 PM PDT Children of migrant laborers who had long been owed wages from a tourism company in Dali, Yunnan province joined their parents in protest this week. The company received a court order to to pay up months ago, but refused to do so. Children's presence on the picket lines seems to have drawn enough public attention to force compensation. China Daily reports on this migrant success story from the southwest of China:
Wall Street Journal's China Realtime Report translates a message from one little girl's sign, and describes how the sentimentality that the children brought to the rally affected netizens:
Two photos of the picketing tots can be seen in Chinese language coverage of the protest. For more on the struggle of China's migrant workers, see prior CDT coverage. Also see "The Uncertain Future of Beijing's Migrant Schools" and "Migration Pattern's Change, Children Still Left Behind" for more on how the lifestyles of migrant laborers affect their successors. © josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| Report Shows Foxconn Conditions Improving Posted: 22 Aug 2012 03:56 PM PDT In March, Taiwanese electronics manufacturing contractor Foxconn pledged to make serious improvements to working conditions in their mainland Chinese factories after the Fair Labor Association launched an investigation into the company. The investigation was hired by Foxconn client Apple Inc., after the American company garnered negative press and pressure from civil society groups to address recurring Foxconn employee suicides and a 2011 explosion that killed 2 employees and injured many more. Yesterday, the Fair Labor Association released a status report, and The Unofficial Apple Weblog summarizes its findings:
The New York Times reports on challenges to reducing overtime, due to both an employee desire to stockpile hours, and to Foxconn logistics:
Reuters interviewed Foxconn employees, and relays mixed opinions on overtime reduction:
The Reuters article also notes that Apple's longtime relationship with the Fair Labor Association has led some to distrust the investigation, a fact noted by Wired during the investigation's beginnings. In July, China Labor Watch released an investigative report alleging labor rights violations elsewhere in Apple's supply chain. Earlier this year, Foxconn indirectly sparked a scandalizing controversy turned epistemic debate, when This American Life broadcast an excerpt from Mike Daisey's one-man show about undercover visits to Foxconn factories in China. This American Life retracted their piece after "substantial fabrications" were revealed in Daisey's tale. For more on labor conditions, workers' rights, Foxconn and Apple, see prior CDT coverage. © josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| Netizen Voices: Power Cut at Indie Film Fest Posted: 22 Aug 2012 02:59 PM PDT
Via CDT Chinese. Translation by Wendy Qian. "Netizen Voices" is an original CDT series. If you would like to reuse this content, please follow the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 agreement. © Wendy Qian for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| Ministry of Truth: Anti-Japanese Protests Posted: 22 Aug 2012 02:06 PM PDT The following example of censorship instructions, issued to the media and/or Internet companies by various central (and sometimes local) government authorities, has been leaked and distributed online. Chinese journalists and bloggers often refer to those instructions as "Directives from the Ministry of Truth." CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.
© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| Advice for Gu Kailai: Lose Weight to Leave Jail Posted: 22 Aug 2012 01:24 PM PDT Netizens are going crazy over the telling placement of headlines in yesterday's edition of the Shandong paper 6 AM Today (今晨6点). At top is a photo of Gu Kailai at her trial and the headline "Bogu Kailai's Commuted Death Sentence." (Chinese media refer to her using by combining her married and maiden names.) Below the fold, a mouse peers out from a beer can. Unable to squeeze itself out, the headline reads, "Go on a Diet, Then Come on Out." The weight Gu Kailai put on between her arrest and trial has many guessing at the conditions of her detention, or whether she even had a body double take the heat for her. There's little hope for true justice, either. A commuted death sentence can easily become a life sentence; Gu may even leave prison in some years' time.
Bogu Kailai's Commuted Death Sentence Bogu Kailai: "I feel that the sentence is fair, and that it reflects the court's sincere respect for the law, sincere respect for reality, and sincere respect for life."
A little mouse's thirst for booze led it into a beer can. It made it in, but no matter what it can't get out. Go on a Diet, Then Come on Out
Read more about Gu Kailai and her husband, Bo Xilai, from CDT. Via Over the Wall. Translation by Josh Rudolph. © Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| Word of the Week: Great, glorious and correct Posted: 22 Aug 2012 12:00 PM PDT Editor's Note: The Word of the Week comes from China Digital Space's Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon, a glossary of terms created by Chinese netizens and frequently encountered in online political discussions. These are the words of China's online "resistance discourse," used to mock and subvert the official language around censorship and political correctness. If you are interested in participating in this project by submitting and/or translating terms, please contact the CDT editors at CDT [at] chinadigitaltimes [dot] net. 伟光正 (wěi guāng zhèng): great, glorious and correct  A Western cartoon from the 1960s picked up by a contemporary netizen is captioned, "After the famine, the Party continues to be 'great, glorious and correct'" (大饥荒后，中共继续"伟光正"). The Chinese Communist Party has described itself as "great, glorious and correct" (伟大光荣正确 wěidà guāngróng zhèngquè) for over 40 years. A 2001 People's Daily editorial is titled (with characteristic lack of irony) "The Communist Party of China is historically proved great, glorious and correct." Recently, however, netizens have turned this term on its head and used it to sarcastically refer to the Party's stubborn insistence that it is always in the right. Netizens use the phrase in a number of ways: 1. As an adjective. Example: "When the country remains underdeveloped it is because the quality of the citizens is too low and domestic conditions are too complicated. When the country develops it is completely because they are great, glorious and correct" ( 国家发展不起来，是因为国民素质太低，国情太复杂。国家发展起来，全是因为他们伟光正了). 2. As a reference to the Party. "Great, glorious and correct cadres" (伟光正的干部). 3. As a personal name. Wei guang zheng sounds like someone's name. A fake Baidu Dictionary entry on Comrade Wei Guangzheng (Chinese) describes a man who always thinks he is right, even though he clearly is not. Political cartoonist Crazy Crab has illustrated the grass-mud horse use of "great, glorious and correct" in his Hexie Farm series for CDT: see "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall," "The Dragon Boat" and "The Loudspeaker." © Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| Posted: 22 Aug 2012 06:48 AM PDT The subject of labor rights was on my mind today. The latest report from the Fair Labor Association came out on Foxconn. My post, Foxconn Labor Standards Progress Report, summarizes the results and has links to the report. You can also check out this story in the Guardian: Apple manufacturer Foxconn improves on Chinese workers' hours and safety. If you're looking for more information on the successful labor protests by Motorola Mobility workers, there are some good details in Caixin: Google's Motorola layoffs spark protests in China. In other news: Bloomberg: China Pollution Tax Plan Submitted to Cabinet — OK, yes, I shudder to think about the implementation and enforcement of this if it passes, but aside from that, it's a step in the right direction, eh? China Daily: CBRC sets up protection bureau — Somehow I think this was easier for China to set up than the analog in the U.S., which was a clusterfuck. Luckily for us here in China, the financial services industry doesn't own the government, at least not yet. Global Times: Foreign correspondents not targeted — Not as bad as it sounds. The issue is whether the recent violence against journalists comes from local guys or the higher ups. Xinhua: China to Formulate New Five-year Anti-corruption Plan — This is more of an announcement (and for me a placeholder) than an article, but it certainly makes me curious as to what the plan is going to look like. Talk about a huge challenge. Financial Times: Thucydides's trap has been sprung in the Pacific — Another "China Rises" Op/Ed. I responded earlier today with this: The Rise of China: Been There, Already Read That. Daniel Bell: Political Meritocracy Is a Good Thing (Part 1): The Case of China — Surprised this wasn't the subject of more chatter today. It's basically a "China Model" argument, the first in a series. New York Times: Writing Chinese in a Digital World — Chinese characters and the challenges of technology. Always fun to read about. © Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us |
| Foxconn Labor Standards Progress Report Posted: 22 Aug 2012 05:49 AM PDT
This was supposed to be an ongoing deal, and if you remember, the last time the Fair Labor Association came calling and wrote up a summary of what was going on at Foxconn, the expectation was that they would be back to see how Foxconn implemented their suggestions. And here we go (from FLA's web site):
The report contains a handy table for keeping score, but basically the news is pretty good. I don't think it's particularly useful to get bogged down in these numbers, which often can obfuscate problems, but for what it's worth, there were a total of 360 "remedial actions" between the three factories. Of those, 195 were scheduled to be completed by May 31, and indeed, Foxconn has complied with all of them. Of a further 254 remedial actions that are scheduled to be completed between June 1 of this year and July 1 of next year, 89 have already been completed ahead of schedule. That doesn't really tell us anything of course. The question is whether conditions have gotten better. Back to the report:
Now we're talking. Overtime is down, wages are up (a lot), worker safety has improved. This seems quite substantive, and the monitoring program will continue. The question everyone is asking of course is "Can I stop feeling guilty about all my iCrap?" I can't help you with that one, but I will say that if Foxconn actually comes into conformity with China labor laws, that will mean that conditions at their facilities will be much better than a hell of a lot of other factories here. That might have been true even before all this started, though. The only other point I'd make here is to look at this, along with the recent successful protest by folks being laid off at Motorola Mobility, and say that the environment for labor rights challenges/protests in China sure has gotten better in the past few years. You protest, you demonstrate, you have the backing of labor rights groups — there's a chance you might actually get somewhere. It helps when your employer is a large multinational that has to worry about its brand of course. This is a win-win in the long run. Apple is, in some ways, now ahead of the curve on being responsive to labor issues. The labor rights groups also have to be happy with the entire process (I would assume). Finally, the workers have obviously benefited, at least until Foxconn starts yanking back all their overtime. © Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us |
| China Announces Plan to Cut Energy Consumption Posted: 22 Aug 2012 03:57 AM PDT In a bid to strengthen China's energy security, the central government announced plans on Tuesday to spend nearly $400 billion to cut China's energy consumption by 300 million tonnes of standard coal before 2015, via projects aimed at energy conservation and pollution reduction . From Reuters:
Last week, The China Daily reported that China's had cut its energy usage by 2 percent last year. © Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| Photo: china_changsha, by adam coster Posted: 22 Aug 2012 03:34 AM PDT © Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| Chinese Cities Pledge to Boost Spending, but Will They? Posted: 22 Aug 2012 03:29 AM PDT The Wall Street Journal reports that a number of Chinese cities have rolled out large stimulus measures intended to boost slumping growth:
Despite the ambitious announcements, however, many analysts question whether Chongqing, Tianjin, and others will actually follow through on their proposed investments. From Reuters:
Earlier this month, The Financial Times highlighted Changha's spending plan:
© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| The Rise of China: Been There, Already Read That Posted: 22 Aug 2012 02:14 AM PDT
How to keep score? Lots of ways, but most of them involve public exposure, like conference presentations, papers published, interviews on television and, last but certainly not least, Op/Ed articles in major publications. Got something in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal or the like, that's a big fat gold star. Of course we run into a quantity versus quality issue. Always a problem. Consider for example how many crappy posts I write (most of them?), which I believe to some extent is a function of the frequency. If I wrote a monthly column instead, I would probably take great pains to make sure it was well written and substantive. Such is life for the blogger. Back to the "PR or die" problem. What's the result? A great number of Op/Eds written by think tankers and academics whose sole purpose is to get their name out there. Nothing wrong with that, of course, unless you just phone in the effort instead of write something worthwhile. The ultimate blame for all of this, of course, rests with the lazy editors who don't bother to notice that what they're publishing leaves a lot to be desired. All of this popped into my head after I read an Op/Ed in the Financial Times by a noted academic (I assume) at Harvard, Graham Allison. The article, "Thucydides's trap has been sprung in the Pacific," is well written by someone who clearly knows his history. I was first put off by the headline, although I'm sure that isn't Allison's fault. Some editor somewhere at the FT apparently thought that something dramatic was called for. After reading that headline, "Thucydides' Trap" sounds like one country lying in wait for another or something. While the U.S. is concerned with, and distracted by, the South China Sea equivalent of Scylla or Charybdis, China is patiently waiting nearby, ready to leap out at the unsuspecting Americans. Lovely image. But that's a minor irritant. More important is Allison's thesis, which I think can be summed up with this quote:
I don't think anyone can disagree with any of that. Everyone knows that the US-China bilateral relationship is key to global stability. Moreover, as even the average ignorant American knows that China's economy that made great leaps and bounds over the past few decades, the issue of China as a rising power is well known. This is all so obvious that I really wonder why this Op/Ed was written at all. Certainly there's nothing timely about it, aside from a throwaway line in the first paragraph about the South China Sea conflict. But seriously, it's not that difficult to find a current dispute on which to hang this sort of Op/Ed. Over the past few years alone, one could have used the Beijing Olympics, the RMB debate, environmental policy, any number of trade fights — need I go on? At first glance, this Op/Ed looks pretty cool and caters to history groupies like myself who have fond memories of studying Ancient Greece or the rise of Bismarck's Germany. Throw in enough of those references, and everyone assumes you're making a deep, intellectual argument. But I can't find one here. This is the whole thing, folks: 1. China is rising. 2. The U.S. is debating how to respond. 3. In the past, this sort of thing has led to war. 4. The U.S. and China (in particular the former) should learn from history and avoid war. Again, all extremely valid points based on excellent scholarship, but honestly, someone writes the exact same thing every 2.7 days, on average (well, it seems like it anyway). I wouldn't be so cranky about all this if Allison at least included some policy suggestions in his conclusions. While there are hundreds of similar pieces out there on "China Rising," almost none of them actually provide specific advice on the preferred U.S. response. Unfortunately, after talking about the potential catastrophe that could result if attitudes do not change, Allison wraps it up with this:
Really, that's it? All we're left with is: 1) The two countries should communicate better; and 2) Adjustments need to be made. OK, yes, hard to disagree. I'm on board with both of those prescriptions, as I suspect is every other person on the planet. Hell, if you asked the residents of Hoboken, New Jersey if the U.S. and China should work on communication, I think most of them would say yes. And about those "adjustments." Even a tiny little hint about what those should be, aside from the reference to China "demanding more say" would have been useful. Everyone and their grandmother has already made the greater point about the U.S. and a rising China. The hard part is formulating actual policy. Sadly, Allison leaves us hanging at the end. [Editorial note: Just for the record, I am not trying to cast any aspersions on Allison, whose Op/Ed is fine, if not exactly new. On the other hand, I'm not at all sure how the Financial Times thought such an article would educate its readers. I guess if you put the word "Thucydides" in the title, that's sufficient these days for most editors in terms of intellectualism.] © Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us |
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