| Two Tibetans Sentenced over Self-Immolations Posted: 30 Jan 2013 10:58 PM PST Two Tibetans accused of inciting self-immolations were sentenced on Thursday. Following a trial held last Saturday, the two were convicted of intentional homicide in line with a legal ruling issued last month. Lorang Konchok, 40, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve and has been stripped of his political rights for life. His nephew, Lorang Tsering, 31, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and has been stripped of his political rights for three years, according to the court verdict. The two incited and coerced eight people to self-immolate, resulting in three deaths, the Intermediate People's Court of the Tibetan-Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Aba found. […] Lorang Konchok used his status as a "geshe," or a high-level Tibetan religious scholar, to convince monks and others to self-immolate, the court found. Lorang Konchok sent information regarding self-immolations to Samtan ["a member of an overseas 'Kirti Monastery media liaison team'"]. The information was used by some overseas media as a basis for creating secessionist propaganda, according to the court. Death with a two-year reprieve is generally commuted to life or fixed-term imprisonment at the end of the two years. According to Xinhua, this reduced sentence was given because Lorang Konchok had "recounted the main facts of the case, pled guilty and showed repentance during the trial". His accounts have been used in state media to accuse overseas organizations and "the Dalai clique" of involvement in the protests.
© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: homicide, Kirti monastery, monks, murder, self-immolations, Tibet
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| Sharp Arrow Operation: World War II Kung Fu Posted: 30 Jan 2013 09:51 PM PST How does a Chinese television producer please viewers and censors alike? How many "Anti-Japanese War" shows can the Chinese public take before they decide to tune out for good? How much patriotic programming can a channel drop before SARFT chafes? Sharp Arrow Operation (利箭行动) has something for everyone: it is just the latest in a decades-long line of World War II TV dramas, but with a martial arts kick. Shot at Hengdian World Studios in Zhejiang Province, Sharp Arrow's 35 episodes cost RMB 50,000,000 (US$8 million). It is the big-budget, action-packed answer to the demands of state and public.
And so a new genre is born: the World War II kung fu show. As this gif makes the rounds online, netizens chuckle at the fictional bloodbath: @hesnet: A Japanese man came to visit China. His first stop was Zhejiang. He found a local guide and gave her 3000 yuan, telling her his grandfather had died fighting in China. He wanted her to take him to the location of the worst Japanese casualties to pay his respects. With money in hand, the guide had him spend 300 yuan on a car, and off they drove. An hour later, she announced that they had arrived. As soon as he stepped out of the car, he saw the sign: Hengdian World Studios. @钢铁侠Z：有一个日本人来中国旅游，第一站到了浙江，他找了一个当地导游，给了3000块钱，说他祖上战死中国，要求导游带他去国内日本人伤亡最惨烈的地方祭拜，导游收钱后带日本人花300块包了辆车，一个小时后告诉日本人到了，日本人下车一看：横店影视城。
 Poster for Sharp Arrow Operation. @avb001: Q: During the Anti-Japanese War, which Chinese military unit finished off the most devils? A: Bayi Film Studio. @avb001：问：在抗日战争中，中国军方编制下那个单位消灭鬼子最多？答：八一电影制片厂
Via CDT Chinese.
© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-Japan, television, World War II
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| New York Times Hacked Following Wen Family Wealth Investigation Posted: 30 Jan 2013 08:47 PM PST The New York Times' Nicole Perlroth reports that computers belonging to the newspaper and its staff have suffered repeated attacks over the past four months, apparently from within China. The intruders appeared to focus on identifying sources for David Barboza's investigation into Wen Jiabao's family's business dealings: although Barboza claimed that his research was based on publicly available records, some suspected a deliberate leak by Wen's political opponents. China's Ministry of National Defense has denied any involvement in the attacks. Investigators still do not know how hackers initially broke into The Times's systems. They suspect the hackers used a so-called spear-phishing attack, in which they send e-mails to employees that contain malicious links or attachments. All it takes is one click on the e-mail by an employee for hackers to install "remote access tools" — or RATs. Those tools can siphon off oceans of data — passwords, keystrokes, screen images, documents and, in some cases, recordings from computers' microphones and Web cameras — and send the information back to the attackers' Web servers. […] The attackers were particularly active in the period after the Oct. 25 publication of The Times article about Mr. Wen's relatives, especially on the evening of the Nov. 6 presidential election. That raised concerns among Times senior editors who had been informed of the attacks that the hackers might try to shut down the newspaper's electronic or print publishing system. But the attackers' movements suggested that the primary target remained Mr. Barboza's e-mail correspondence. "They could have wreaked havoc on our systems," said Marc Frons, the Times's chief information officer. "But that was not what they were after." What they appeared to be looking for were the names of people who might have provided information to Mr. Barboza. I would like to apologize to the NYT computer support folks I snapped at after they reset my password without warning nytimes.com/2013/01/31/tec… — John Schwartz — NYT (@jswatz) January 31, 2013
© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cyberattacks, cybersecurity, hackers, hacking, journalism, new york times, news media, newspapers, Wen Jiabao
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| Mourning Candles & Smileys for Dead Japanese Hostages Posted: 30 Jan 2013 05:40 PM PST At Tea Leaf Nation, Minami Funakoshi considers perceived differences between the Sina and Tencent Weibo platforms based on reactions to an Asahi Shimbun post on Japanese deaths in the recent Algerian hostage crisis. [… E]ven a reader with no Chinese language skills will notice a troubling difference: [on Sina Weibo], commenters lit virtual candles of mourning; [on Tencent Weibo], reactions consisted of laughter and celebration. The Chinese people have long had mixed feelings toward Japan. After the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake — the largest ever recorded in Japanese history — hit the island nation, some Chinese Web users expressed condolences, while others rejoiced in Japan's tragedy. But why is there such a sharp divide between users of two different Weibo platforms? Are Chinese Web users on Sino Weibo more sympathetic toward the Japanese? Does anti-Japan sentiment really run stronger on Tencent Weibo? Some Chinese Web users certainly think so. "Sina Weibo users are obviously relatively mature," posted one user, @卟懂_作业先森他不爱我, on Sina Weibo. "This is why I don't use Tencent Weibo," commented another user, @姬旦. Defenders of Tencent Weibo, however, attribute the difference in online reaction to the different degrees of censorship. "This is because some posts on Sina Weibo were 'killed,'" argued @千树枯, "If you look at it from this perspective, Sina Weibo is truly tragic!" In both cases, however, initial responses may be misleading, and Funakoshi concludes that "Netizen opinion is fickle, time-dependent, and unreliable — especially when viewed as a proxy for Chinese opinion." For more on the potential pitfalls of Weibo-watching, see 'Weibo's Limits and the Ballad of China's Middle Class' at CDT. Sina Weibo's candle icon previously appeared on CDT after it was temporarily removed last June so it could not be "lit" in memory of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.
© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Algeria, anti-Japan, Japanese, netizens, public opinion, sina weibo, Tencent Weibo, weibo
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| Photo: Soup, by Mark Hobbs Posted: 30 Jan 2013 05:06 PM PST |
| Word of the Week: Temporary Workers Posted: 30 Jan 2013 12:00 PM PST |
| Fresh Air Goes on Sale Posted: 30 Jan 2013 08:40 AM PST As Beijing residents are once again advised to stay indoors amid choking air pollution, some environmentalists are pessimistic about the possibilities for a thorough clean-up. From Bloomberg: "I haven't seen the smog stay so long like this for years," a 40-year-old woman who only gave her last name, Zhou, said after buying two air purifiers for more than 13,000 yuan($2,000) each in downtown Beijing. "This seems to be the only solution for us. You used to just open the windows to get fresh air at home, but now you can't do that since it's even dirtier outside." [...] Official measurements of PM2.5 rose to 993 in Beijing on Jan. 12. The city has proposed rules to scrap old vehicles, ban new cement and steel factories, and impose fines for roadside vendors barbecuing food on smoggy days. Further measures to clean up the capital may be difficult because much of Beijing's smog comes from surrounding regions, Ma Jun, a Beijing-based environmentalist and founder of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said in a phone interview. "China is the world's biggest steel producer, and half of China's steel is produced in areas around Beijing such as Hebei and Tianjin, mostly by burning coal," Ma said. "How can the region stand this?"
People with an entrepreneurial spirit have started to make money by selling fresh air in cans. From John Garnaut at The Sydney Morning Herald: Chen Guangbiao, whose wealth is valued at $740 million according to the Hurun Report, sells his cans of air for five yuan each. It comes with atmospheric flavours including pristine Tibet, post-industrial Taiwan and revolutionary Yan'an, the Communist Party's early base area. Mr Chen told Fairfax Media he wanted to make a point that China's air was turning so bad that the idea of bottled fresh air is no longer fanciful. "If we don't start caring for the environment then after 20 or 30 years our children and grandchildren might be wearing gas masks and carry oxygen tanks," said Mr Chen.
James Fallows at The Atlantic notices a less humorous related phenomena: birth defects and cognitive disorders related to the heavy pollution: Some related notes that have come in, about a problem increasingly recognized inside China as a national emergency. From a reader in the United States: "[...A]long with the disappearance of children with no identified medical needs, we have seen a huge increase in the number of children with identified medical needs. Every month, I place children (from 9 months to 14 years) who have cleft lip and/or cleft palate; missing fingers, hands, toes, parts of arms or legs; malformed internal organs; genetic disorders; etc. " [...] From another reader, this link to an article on the possible relationship between certain forms of pollution and autism. And from a technically trained reader who has been living and working in China: "It is not hard to believe, if the vegetables they ate spent the entire season grown in soil and air laden with heavy metals, the water they drank is contaminated with metals and VOCs [Volatile Organic Compounds], and the air the breath is full of PM2.5 dust which can pass through the alveoli sacs into the blood stream, and through the blood/brain barrier, directly into their growing brains. Certainly, we are aware of how heavy metals retard brain development…"
See more on air pollution via CDT.
© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, air quality, Beijing, Beijing environment, coal burning, coal emissions, environmental activism, PM 2.5, sustainable development
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