Blogs » Politics » Online Account of Affair Leads to Dismissal of Official
Blogs » Politics » Online Account of Affair Leads to Dismissal of Official |
- Online Account of Affair Leads to Dismissal of Official
- Gamers Fight Corrupt Officials, Learn from Lei Feng
- China's Resistance Art Beyond Ai Weiwei
- Bo’s Lawyers From Party-Friendly Firm
- Has Chongqing’s Great Divide Widened Since Bo?
- An Overture From China Is Yet to Win Hollywood
- Contemporary Chinese Art: Young and Restless
- Photo: Flying Dogs, by Svend Erik Hansen
- Hexie Farm (蟹农场): The Spell of Xixiphus
- Exiled Poet Liao Yiwu’s Prison Memoir Released in France
- We Are Returning Soon
- The Cultural Aspect of Wildlife Trade in China
- Anti-Trust Victory for China’s LCD Makers, But Where is the Money?
- Trying to Understand Today’s Huawei News Conference
- China Critical of Clinton’s Diaoyu Remarks
- Nostalgic for Chinese High Culture
- After Shanghai Government Finding Leads to P.R. Crisis, KFC’s Online Apology Falls Flat
| Online Account of Affair Leads to Dismissal of Official Posted: 21 Jan 2013 10:23 PM PST The latest casualty of a shifting tide against official power and privilege is Yi Junqing, director of the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau, who recently lost his job over "lifestyle issues." These issues came to light after a female researcher in his department published a 100,000 character account of their year-long affair. From the New York Times:
Ministry of Tofu has more details on the affair and the online account:
Feichang Dao blog reports that a Zhejiang Daily editorial on the case, entitled "Mouth Full of Marxism, Belly Full of Deceit," was deleted from the website. © Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| Gamers Fight Corrupt Officials, Learn from Lei Feng Posted: 21 Jan 2013 08:56 PM PST Chinese authorities' attitude toward video games has been mixed, with large industry subsidies on one hand and wariness of moral corrosion on the other. At the same time, The Telegraph's Malcolm Moore reports, the Party has also sought to harness games as propaganda tools, allowing players to learn from Lei Feng, battle corrupt officials, or liberate the Diaoyu Islands.
Propaganda gaming is not a Chinese invention. Since 2002, the U.S. has produced America's Army, a hugely successful game-slash-recruitment tool which has also spawned a series of comic books. The game has come under fire from critics including veterans' organizations who accuse it of exploiting impressionable teenagers. © Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| China's Resistance Art Beyond Ai Weiwei Posted: 21 Jan 2013 06:21 PM PST Despite high-handed repression, resistance in the form of action art is getting popular in China. While Ai Weiwei is the most internationally known Chinese art-activist, there are many similar initiatives unknown to the western world. Li Ning (李凝) the Body Art Guerrilla Group, Made-in-J Town (凌雲焰肢體游擊隊), are among one of the most interesting groups. Recently, they released three action art performances from 2008 through Youtube. The year of the Beijing Olympics - 2008 - dissent voices in the country faced the harshest repression. The 11-year imprisonment of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, because of his Charter 08 initiative, is the most well-known example. These videos from 2008 give a glimpse into the resistance culture among young people in China. The first one, Shandong: Olympic + Demolition (山東：奧運＋拆遷), criticizes the 2008 Olympics from a humanistic point of view: Acopy.net has a brief explanation of the video:
The second one, Fee for selecting school (擇校費), shows a body protest: Below is acopy.net's description:
The third one, Currency at the intersection leading to the underworld (冥幣路口), is an action art performance that shows the negative power of money: Explanation of the video via acopy.net:
(The thumbnail image is captured from the video: Shandong: Olympic + Demolition) Written by Oiwan Lam · comments (0) |
| Bo’s Lawyers From Party-Friendly Firm Posted: 21 Jan 2013 06:53 PM PST The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that the lawyers defending disgraced former Chongqing Communist Party chief Bo Xilai, who faces criminal charges, hail from a firm that has close ties to the Party. From the South China Morning Post:
The Telegraph's Tom Phillips noted last week that one of the lawyers, Li Guifang, spent time studying in the UK in 1989:
Read more about Bo Xilai via CDT. © Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| Has Chongqing’s Great Divide Widened Since Bo? Posted: 21 Jan 2013 05:13 PM PST The Globe and Mail's Mark MacKinnon checks in from Chongqing, where he sees evidence of China's large and growing wealth gap:
See also photos from The Globe and Mail's John Lehmann, who also joined MacKinnon on a journey to retrace the path of Mao Zedong's Long March and explore the challenges facing today's China. China made its Gini coefficient – which measures income inequality – public last week for the first time since 2000. © Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| An Overture From China Is Yet to Win Hollywood Posted: 21 Jan 2013 04:38 PM PST Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group is planning to expand its entertainment business into the United States, but boss Wang Jianlin's ambitions of a share in mainstream Hollywood productions are not developing smoothly. From Michael Cieply at the New York Times:
See more on Wanda's acquisition of AMC and Cieply's recent account, with Brooks Barnes, of the political strings attached to co-productions in China, via CDT. © Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| Contemporary Chinese Art: Young and Restless Posted: 21 Jan 2013 04:16 PM PST At The Economist's Analects blog, Alec Ash discusses ON / OFF: China's Young Artists in Concept and Practice. The exhibition at Beijing's Ullens Center includes the Foxconn-focused Consumption by Li Liao, who was interviewed last week by Evan Osnos, and a leather tank, lying crumpled and deflated like a discarded snake skin, by He Xiangyu.
Photographs and more information on the exhibition are available at the Ullens Center's website. © Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| Photo: Flying Dogs, by Svend Erik Hansen Posted: 21 Jan 2013 02:57 PM PST  Flying Dogs © Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| Hexie Farm (蟹农场): The Spell of Xixiphus Posted: 21 Jan 2013 02:51 PM PST For his latest contribution to the Hexie Farm CDT series, cartoonist Crazy Crab depicts Xi Jinping as the belabored Sisyphus from Greek legend, who was punished for his hubris by repeatedly trying in vain to push a boulder up a mountain, only to have it roll back down to the bottom each time. In Hexie Farm's rendering, "Xixiphus" is pushing the promises of reform up to the summit, the "rejuvenation of the nation," but they have yet to be realized.
Read more about Hexie Farm's CDT series, including a Q&A with the anonymous cartoonist, and see all cartoons so far in the series.
© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| Exiled Poet Liao Yiwu’s Prison Memoir Released in France Posted: 21 Jan 2013 02:45 PM PST Liao Yiwu spent the early 1990s in prison for writing the poem Massacre, about the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. His account of these four years will be published in English this summer as For a Song and a Hundred Songs: A Poet's Journey through a Chinese Prison, and was released in French this month under the title Dans l'empire des ténèbres (In the Empire of Darkness). From the AFP:
Liao discussed the book's origins with Mariana Grépinet (article in French) at Paris Match:
Fragments of Liao's time in prison can be seen in Nineteen Days, his recollections of June 4ths from 1989 to 2009, translated by Wenguang Huang and published in The Paris Review:
In November, Li was sentenced to 12 years in prison for charges related to a property deal. According to Liao, the case was actually motivated by officials' misplaced suspicions that Li had financed his escape to Germany. See also Philip Gourevitch on Liao's move to Germany at The New Yorker, and an interview with Ian Johnson at The New York Review of Books soon afterwards, via CDT. © Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| Posted: 21 Jan 2013 11:00 AM PST
Dear Readers, Happy New Year! Publication of the Asia Pacific Memo will resume in late January. We begin by questioning received wisdom, looking at why protests in China and India are so similar and why North Korea should be thought of as a post-socialist country. We thank you for your continued interest in Asia Pacific Memo, which makes the findings of academic research on contemporary Asia available to a wider audience. As always, we welcome your comments and any submissions. Don't hesitate to contact us at: asiapacificmemo [at] gmail.com With best wishes from the APM team. |
| The Cultural Aspect of Wildlife Trade in China Posted: 21 Jan 2013 06:49 AM PST Terroir from Beijing Cream criticizes professional photojournalist Patrick Brown's photographs series, Trading to Extinction for being over simplified in the explanation of wildlife trade in China as "naive" and "greed":
Written by Oiwan Lam · comments (0) |
| Anti-Trust Victory for China’s LCD Makers, But Where is the Money? Posted: 21 Jan 2013 08:15 AM PST  Source: Wikimedia Commons Mainland China's legal system has taken a step forward — even if it was followed by a step backward. In early January, Chinese authorities imposed anti-trust penalties against foreign corporations for the first time. China's powerful National Development and Reform Commission (NRDC), which exercises control over large swaths of China's economy, hit Korean companies Samsung and LG and four Taiwanese companies with a US$56 million fine for manipulating the price of flat panel screens. Through the China Video Industry Association, nine Chinese television makers had brought a suit before the NRDC. The NDRC found these six companies, who together comprise 80 percent of the total market share, had regularly colluded on pricing strategy for the global LCD panel market during 53 rounds of "crystal conferences", held between 2001 and 2006. Of the total fine, 172 million RMB (about US$27 million) is supposed to be refunded to nine Chinese TV makers, including Konka Group, Changhong Electric, Skyworth Group and TCL Corp. After the ruling, Samsung and LG immediately issued statements conveying their apologies to Chinese TV manufacturers, promising to abide by Chinese laws in the future and to deal with buyers fairly. Symbolic Meaning A more integrated and advanced legal system has become an urgent need within China as its economy expands, creating a gap between legal requirements and existing applicable laws. Officially, the case is the first brought against foreign firms by the NDRC, and it indicates China's determination to seek more global clout in the legal arena. Previously, China has never punished a foreign entity on anti-trust grounds. save for an investigation of Unilever in 2011. Xu Kunlin, Director of the anti-trust division of the NDRC, told China News that the penalty shows that China is accelerating the construction of its legal system and protecting Chinese manufacturers' interests. In 2006, authorities in China, the E.U. and the U.S. all received the same complaint alleging an LCD cartel. At that time, China had no anti-trust law on which to base a ruling. Moreover, investigating the LCD makers' claim demanded a level of manpower and technical expertise that a Chinese civil court could not muster. Instead, the NDRC launched its own inquiry. Even when the ultimate fine was announced, it was tiny compared with the 648 million euro and US$1.2 billion fines levied in the E.U. and the U.S. against the same LCD manufacturers. That's because the manipulation occurred between 2001 and 2006, and China's 2008 anti-trust law could not be retroactively applied. Instead, the judgment was based on China's Pricing Law. An NRDC spokesman noted that if the case had been decided based on the anti-trust law, the offending companies would have faced fines comprising between 1% and 10% of their global revenues, which would have been much higher. According to Michael Han, an anti-trust partner at Freshfields, a British law firm, the NRDC's 6-year investigation into the LCD makers had built up a staff with experience in evidence collection and analysis, and China is now confident that its enforcement can catch up to that in Europe and the U.S., where governmental authorities had decades or even more than a hundred years of anti-trust experiences. Edward Lehman, a foreign lawyer and managing partner of Lehman, Lee & Xu Law Firm, suggested that in the future, Chinese authorities need to consider processing similar anti-trust cases in civil court, not under a regulatory authority. Part of the reason may be the business culture in China. Lehman suggested that although settling disputes between business partners through litigation is part of Western business culture, in China companies are always afraid of jeopardizing their relationships by heading to court. Writng on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter, users commenting on the ruling complained that the fine was not hefty enough to deter future manipulation. User @王福重 raised questions about fair dealing. The NDRC is also involved in setting prices of key items domestically, such as refined oil, so it is ironic that it cracks down on price-fixing of some companies while setting the prices for others. User @柯荆民, however, is more hopeful that the NDRC would flex its newfound muscle against domestic companies, such as the liquor-maker Maotai and its peers, which often draw ire among Chinese consumers for the high prices of their products. Where's the Refund? Three days after the ruling, it was reported that all of the 172 million RMB refund had been kept by the CVIA, the industry association that had led the suit, and CTU-Tech, a video industry consulting firm. CVIA was supposed to keep only half of the refund for its next fiscal year according to a private agreement between the organization and the nine plaintiff LCD makers. But a person familiar with the case told Yangcheng evening news that the companies had not received any of the refund. Stranger still, all parties involved declined to comment. Only later, Bai Weimin, secretary of CVIA, issued a confusing statement that the association is a joint venture started by these nine firms and these owners had authorized the organization to utilize the refund for its daily maintenance. However, the statement did not dispel the uncomfortable suggestion that the CVIA kept the fines for itself without consulting the plaintiff LCD makers. No matter who benefitted from this case, the unseemly aftermath to what could have been a landmark ruling has both analysts and microbloggers disappointed. Chinese TV makers had the wherewithal to band together, avail themselves of the regulatory system, and win. But the confusion surrounding the amount and distribution of damages shows that it is not enough for China's legal regime to modernize; the private market must do so as well. China's legal system has been playing catch-up to the international standards for some time, but with transactions and dealings built around the Chinese concept of relationship-based business, there is still a long way to go.         |
| Trying to Understand Today’s Huawei News Conference Posted: 21 Jan 2013 03:33 AM PST
However, I did read what journalists present at the news conference have said, and as a media management exercise, I think it's fair to take a look at the results. On the whole, I was slightly confused on the messaging.
On the one hand you've got the Financial Times with an upbeat, positive headline "Huawei pledges openness to woo critics" that emphasizes Meng's comments about releasing information about Huawei's shareholding structure, which has been a source of controversy due to lack of clarity.
If one of the goals of the press conference was an attempt to undo some of the damage incurred of late because of lack of transparency, then the FT article is evidence of success. On the other hand, you've got the Associated Press with "China's Huawei criticizes US security complaints as trade protectionism, promises transparency." Yes, the good news is tacked on there at the end, but the article leads with this:
and includes this:
Was this intended to push back against recent U.S. criticism, including the now infamous U.S. House intelligence committee report? Meng's comments certainly do that, but the tough guy approach doesn't exactly mesh well with the conciliatory language about transparency. To be fair, Meng's comments might make perfect sense as a whole, and obviously one can be both critical and conciliatory in a single press conference. Perhaps the FT and AP are the ones we should be looking at in terms of going with a biased view of the proceedings, although I have no way of knowing which one is more fair or accurate (perhaps neither). But ultimately, this is Huawei's show, and I'm sure it had certain goals for this event. I have a feeling that it is probably fine with the FT coverage but is somewhat disappointed with the AP account. Knowing that negative coverage might follow from any discussion of U.S. protectionism, I have to wonder why it was brought up in the first place. Who is the audience for that language and was there a better way to reach them? © Stan for China Hearsay, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us |
| China Critical of Clinton’s Diaoyu Remarks Posted: 21 Jan 2013 02:50 AM PST U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton stood with Japan's Foreign Minister on Friday and said that America opposed "any unilateral actions that would seek to undermine Japanese administration" of the Diaoyu Islands, comments that drew sharp criticism from China on Sunday. From Bloomberg:
Jane Perlez of The New York Times reported that the Chinese military also took a hawkish tone with indirect warnings in its media mouthpieces:
Read more about the Diaoyu Islands dispute via CDT. © Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| Nostalgic for Chinese High Culture Posted: 21 Jan 2013 01:50 AM PST We're sliding into the Spring Festival holiday here, the year's high point, one could say, of Chinese culture around the world. In addition to all the usual holiday celebrations, it also affords us the opportunity to navel gaze about cultural traditions or, depending on who you are, bitch and moan about the sorry state of affairs here in China. You're probably familiar with this sort of grousing, since it seems to be a common human past time. For some reason, we like to fix our attention in the past, imagining that most aspects of life, including cultural traditions, were somehow of better or purer quality. In the U.S., which has practically no history at all when compared to many other nations such as China or India that have been around for thousands of years, there is a significant faction that looks back at the 1950s as a golden age. Yes, it's nonsense, but people are funny like that.
Here in China, the nostalgia goes back slightly further in time, back to the Tang Dynasty, roughly a thousand years ago. This was the high point in Chinese culture, many would say, when you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting incomparable calligraphers, painters, sages, and so on. If you're going to complain about modern China, the Tang Dynasty always gets mentioned. And there are plenty of complaints, some of which I've written about here on this blog with respect to China's "soft power." I found a specific critique a few days ago in a Global Times Op/Ed, which hits familiar themes as the author argues that China's projection of its cultural heritage to the rest of the world has not been keeping up with its economic power:
The author, Xiao Fuxing, a former editor-in-chief of People's LIterature magazine, has a valid point here. Many of China's recent attempts at soft power projection have been ham handed and ineffective. The cited advertisement in Times's Square, essentially a series of head shots of Chinese celebrities, was groan-worthy. Not only were many of the featured celebs completely unknown to Western audiences, but the overall message of the ad was unclear. Perhaps "We have famous people too"? I don't know. Xiao goes on to further critique the current state of China television:
Cultural trash? I find it difficult to define such a concept. There are certainly poorly written, acted and otherwise executed shows out there (most of them, to be honest). Many are blatant copies of commercially successful shows, and the vast majority are based on vacuous, uninteresting subject matter. I think Xiao and I would agree to this point. One must acknowledge of course that some cultural trash is quite successful. From an American perspective, I would put all reality shows in that category. These execrable television programs make a lot of money and, one could say, remain a significant part of the projection of U.S. soft power around the world. More's the pity, but I think many would argue that these crappy shows are a net gain for the image of the U.S. abroad. Does Xiao want a commercially successful domestic industry, one that even might be able to distribute some products abroad, or is the goal to just develop higher standards? Perhaps there might be some overlap between the two categories, but then again, maybe not as much as some folks think. So what's the solution? What's that hit show that will make loads of money and be well received abroad? Xiao tells us that China's cultural products are missing traditional themes such as filial piety. Sounds like a Christian conservative in the U.S. arguing for more "wholesome" programming. We have plenty of that, it just isn't as successful as shows that feature sex and violence, which is what we hairless apes apparently treasure. I suppose the idea here is that if more Chinese sitcoms reflected relationships of which Confucius would approve, not only would these shows be successful within China but also abroad. Perhaps Xiao would like to pitch a Friends knockoff that focuses on how obedient all the 20-somethings are to their fathers? Any takers? I didn't think so. Xiao believes that if China "takes out the cultural trash," it will be left with classically-themed masterpieces over which the world will swoon. Sorry, but it ain't gonna happen. I don't recall last year's Confucius biopic garnering any Oscars, and it certainly did not do well at the box office. Nostalgia is not the solution to China's soft power problems. We all know what the real solution is, but Xiao cannot say what it is creative industries need: a lot of money and no content restrictions. The result will likely be a combination of crappy populist pablum and true artistic genius, but it's tough to have one without the other. You have to let the market sort all that out. You have to give the people what they want, and lecturing them on old traditions simply isn't entertaining. © Stan for China Hearsay, 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us |
| After Shanghai Government Finding Leads to P.R. Crisis, KFC’s Online Apology Falls Flat Posted: 20 Jan 2013 08:54 PM PST  KFC's parent company considers China the "greatest restaurant opportunity of the 21st century." (raldski gimo/Flickr) The latest food safety scare in China involves the ubiquitous foreign fast-food chain KFC. China's social media bubbled with reports in late 2012 that KFC used broiler chicken that went from hatchery to kitchen in only 45 days, KFC was investigated by domestic media and subject to inspections by the Shanghai Food Safety Authority. The authority announced on December 24, 2012 that the level of antibiotics and steroids was within official limits after reviewing the chicken used at KFC locations throughout China, however, one of the eight samples tested contained amantadine, a drug used to treat Parkinson's disease which is banned for use in food. This crisis of confidence and resulting government probe caused KFC's parent Yum! Brands Inc. to take a noticeable hit in its fourth-quarter profits. Yum! Brands, which also owns fast-food chains Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, says it has since stopped purchasing chicken from problematic suppliers. KFC Speaks to the micro-blogging masses, who hiss back To mediate the resultant bad publicity, Yum! Brands turned to Sina Weibo, a Chinese micro-blogging platform, on January 10, 2013 to apologize to Chinese customers for its handling of the recent food scare. Yum! posting an open letter of apology from J. Samuel Su, chairman and chief executive of Yum! China, which was retweeted over 1,700 times and received over 900 comments. In Su's letter, he promises consumers that Yum! will improve the methods it uses to test its products, improve communication with authorities, raise the bar for suppliers, and (perhaps less comforting) help suppliers develop "advanced cultivation methods" for chickens. Although the letter itself remains viewable on KFC China's official Weibo account, a search for the title of the message — "An Open Letter to Our Many Customers" is blocked due to "relevant rules and regulations." If the kerfuffle has touched a nerve with consumers and authorities, perhaps it's because Yum! has 5,100 restaurants on the Chinese mainland. In fact, China is the U.S.-based company's largest market, and Yum! declares on its website that it "consider[s] China to be the greatest restaurant opportunity of the 21st century." If the online response to Su's letter is any evidence of the company's near-term future in China, things do not look good. Users commenting on the letter overwhelmingly criticized Yum! or KFC, many pausing to note that over two weeks had passed between the time that authorities announced finding amantadine and Yum!'s online apology. KFC issued online statements in the interim that fell short of an apology. Many netizens simply didn't accept Mr. Su's apology, and fell in line to bid farewell to the chain, demanding it "get out of China." . @超级加菲喵 wrote, "Another apology is useless, do not eat!" @IanTree made sure to show where her loyalties lie, commenting "You give your apology, but I won't return there to eat." The larger blowback One could be forgiven for thinking that KFC's blunder would benefit its fast-food competitors. Instead, the incident prompted some Web users to speak out against foreign-owned restaurant chains in general. Much discussion revolved around the fear of allowing children to consume fast-food items. User @别一起堕落 reminded others to "think about the kids who like to eat there; what a sin!" @Miss_茉茉 wrote hyperbolically, "Eating KFC will cause our children's future offspring to be deformed. Absolutely do not eat it." The outcry against fast food, and foreign chains in particular, was loud enough that McDonald's felt compelled to issue a statement averring its compliance with food safety standards. Some Web users are nonetheless urging others to avoid eating fast-food altogether. User @oO心o儿Oo tweeted that he will "never again eat at KFC or McDonald's." @米兰城的小铁匠 went after the foreign restaurant chains using humor: "I've been saying all along that to me, KFC, McDonald's, etc are just good places to find a clean bathroom when I'm out walking around." @AllenTau's comment, while apocryphal, is surely the kind of reaction that keeps American businesspeople in China awake at night: "I reject this apology! The U.S. developed [genetic modification] and now is trying to dump them in China, Although China has all sorts of domestic problems, the U.S. makes them worse!" Many commenters looked beyond KFC and even its Western counterparts altogether, decrying a larger trend of big businesses protecting their presence in the Chinese market without regard for consumers' health. @大变与小变 commented that businesses are "losing their humanity in order to make a bit of money." User @吉哆啦寿司宝体店 wondered, "Do these business owners not know the truth?" Are they not parents themselves? Would they let their children eat this bad chicken? Is money the only important thing to them? Chinese children are being harmed." To many users, the KFC incident is one in a string of food scandals in China, where fast-food suppliers often cut corners to meet the demands of the world's largest market. @samman来了 demonstrated the sense of resignation that will keep customers wary, even if it keeps them coming back: "Foreign fast food is all this way, [but] domestically it's even worse."     |
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