Links » Crème » Top-of-the-Week Links: Xi Jinping’s visit to a Hebei village, Bo Xilai’s trial was not today, and Li Na makes a lot of money

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• Top-of-the-Week Links: Xi Jinping’s visit to a Hebei village, Bo Xilai’s trial was not today, and Li Na makes a lot of money
• Chinese gamer rage results in double murder, burnt house
• Blogger who exposed Lei Zhengfu, other sex scandals draws heat from police [UPDATE]

Top-of-the-Week Links: Xi Jinping’s visit to a Hebei village, Bo Xilai’s trial was not today, and Li Na makes a lot of money Posted: 28 Jan 2013 04:00 AM PST This is Beijing, via Kotaku We're on a new server – apologies about the erratic posting schedule today. We're back on track with links. The story of the week — about wealth disparity, Xi Jinping, and a village in Hebei province. "Never before has grinding poverty had such a shiny silver lining. At least that is how the 600 corn farmers who inhabit this remote mountain hamlet in north China are feeling in the weeks since Xi Jinping, China's new leader, dropped by to showcase their deprivation. // With a gaggle of local party chiefs and photographers in tow, Mr. Xi ducked into ramshackle farmhouses, patted dirt-smudged children on the head and, with little prompting, nibbled on a potato plucked from Tang Rongbin's twig-fueled cooking fire." (NY Times) Bo Xilai's trial was not today. "Demonstrators in southern China unfurled a banner in support of ousted Politburo member Bo Xilai outside a courthouse where some reports said his trial was due to begin today. // 'Secretary Bo, corrupt and incompetent officials envy you, the people love you,' said the red banner with gold letters, held by a man and a woman outside the Guiyang Intermediate People's Court in the southern province of Guizhou. The two folded up the banner and left after about a minute." (Bloomberg) Corollary: "The mayor of the scandal-plagued southwestern Chinese metropolis of Chongqing said on Saturday that local authorities had banished the malign influence of the city's former top official Bo Xilai, and vowed never to never allow a repeat of his crimes." (Reuters) Hillary Clinton not missed in China. "It's a badly kept secret in Beijing that quite a few Chinese officials, including very senior ones, never warmed to Hillary Rodham Clinton. How much of that is because she is an outspoken supporter of women's rights is unclear, but it is almost certainly a factor: China is run by men (literally — there is not a single woman in the inner circle of power, the Standing Committee of the Politburo), and women have little policy input, whether on domestic or global issues." (Rendezvous, NYT) This is nice. "Shock! Horror! Weibo users are not all foaming-at-the-mouth nationalist bigots! Following the defeat of Chinese tennis player Li Na by Victoria Azarenka, a few abusive posts on the Belarussian's Weibo page were drowned out by thousands of messages of congratulations." (Shanghaiist) On Li Na being world's highest-earning female athlete: "Saturday's Australian Open women's tennis final will be an all-Nike affair as Li Na faces off against Victoria Azarenka. Nothing particularly unusual there, given that the US sportswear giant also sponsors Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams. But Nike won't quite have it all its own way. // That's because Li Na has a deal – unique among Nike's stable of tennis superstars that also includes Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer – that allows her to have two other brands on her shirt in addition to the Nike swoosh. Those two? The well-known car company Mercedes-Benz, and the less well-known insurance company Taikang Life." (The Li-Ning Tower) Hell of an article start. "In Western media and scholarship, Chinese crowds are often schizophrenically portrayed as either terrifying or emancipatory – from the manic frenzy of the Red Guards to the student fighters for democracy at Tian'anmen, from angry mobs destroying Japanese goods to heroic Hong Kong citizens defying Mainland 'brainwashing,' the massive, nameless Chinese crowd looms large in the global imagination as a specter embodying the ambivalence at the heart of modern political democracy." (Roy Chan, Dissertation Reviews) Hmm. "'The Chinese government remains committed to China-Japan relations,' Mr. Xi told the Japanese lawmaker, Natsuo Yamaguchi, in some of his first remarks on foreign policy since becoming general secretary of the Communist Party, according to an account provided by China's Foreign Ministry. // Mr. Xi urged both sides to 'look at the larger picture' and 'push relations forward,' the Foreign Ministry said, language markedly more restrained than the combative statements from military officials and state-run news media since the dispute over the islands erupted last year." (NY Times) "Eating up your dishes." "Chinese netizens have launched an online campaign against waste on dining tables, calling for people to take uneaten food home after banquets and take action to curb waste." (Sina) USC US-China Institute's "Assignment China – End of an Era" interlude: Finally… Funcom Beijing shutting down. (Gamespot) Nu River dam project will go forward. (SCMP) "On dating Chinese men… Are Chinese men the best kept secret?" (YinYangJinFeng) Pictures: when catwalk models fall. (Xinhua) Meet the writers of the Beijinger on Wednesday at Cuju, 5-8 pm. (the Beijinger) Finally, finally… Via Shanghaiist

Chinese gamer rage results in double murder, burnt house Posted: 28 Jan 2013 03:11 AM PST We've all experienced the apoplexy that comes with a dropped Internet connection, especially in China, where connections can drop in so many ways (such as a non-VPN'ed google search of a sensitive term, which is the worst). But needless to say, few of us have acted on our threats to "kill someone." The guy in this story did though. Brought to us by Charlie Custer of Tech in Asia: A spotty internet connection can be a real annoyance, but a gamer in China surnamed Zhao took things to a whole new level at an internet cafe in Renqiu, Hebei. When the connection dropped while Zhao was playing a favorite web game, he got angry and sought out the owner of the cafe at his nearby home. The two got into an argument after the owner (surnamed Ren) suggested that Zhao had downloaded a virus that caused the drop, and Zhao began to hit Ren with his fists. Ren, trying to protect himself, brandished a hammer (though he didn't strike Zhao with it), and Zhao responded by grabbing scissors and stabbing Ren repeatedly. Ren tried to counter with the hammer, but Zhao grabbed it and began smashing him in the head until he fell to the ground, dead. When Ren's wife came over, Zhao smashed her in the head with a hammer too, also stabbing her with the scissors and a nearby kitchen knife. Hints of Dostoevsky in that crime, if I may be allowed to say. Chinese Gamer Murders Two, Burns Down House When Internet Cuts Out (Tech in Asia)

Blogger who exposed Lei Zhengfu, other sex scandals draws heat from police [UPDATE] Posted: 27 Jan 2013 05:27 PM PST The "law" may have finally caught up with Zhu Ruifeng, the whistleblower who released sex tapes that busted 11 officials, including district Party boss Lei Zhengfu of Chongqing. Last night, scary cops visited his home in Beijing, saying they were from the local police station. "Zhu suspected that they had actually come from Chongqing and that their true intent was to take him away and recover the five additional sex tapes he had threatened to release," according to the Washington Post. Zhu alerted journalists to his situation, and after about two hours, the cops left after Zhu promised to visit the local station later today. It's believed that he has five more sex tapes depicting officials having sex with young women, possibly all of them from an extortion outfit that lured officials into intimate encounters while secretly filming. That outfit, as it was reported earlier last week, has been punished as well. Via Reuters: Chinese police in the inland port city of Chongqing have busted a ring that extorted local officials with secretly-filmed video of their encounters with young women, the state-run Xinhua news agency said on Thursday. It's also believed that Zhu has the only copy of the Lei Zhengfu sex tape in existence, which has yet to be made public. Washington Post again: Zhu said he transferred the unreleased videos to friends in the United States, which he called "the safest place in the world." The videos, he noted, included officials who have not yet been punished or fired. "If something bad happens to me, I hope my friends will release those videos immediately," he said. Meanwhile, observers wonder what to make of the central government's anti-corruption campaign if local authorities are still allowed to make late-night visits and intimidate whistleblowers: So far, most reports of corruption have originated from online whistleblowers like Zhu, who post their findings on China's Twitter-like microblogs, Weibo. Some bloggers had hoped the new anti-corruption drive would help them avoid the harsh government reprisals they have experienced in the past. But many are increasingly quoting an ancient saying once used to describe the execution of criminals and now used to warn of the party's long, unforgiving memory: "Wait to settle your score after the autumn harvest." If local authorities are allowed to punish whistleblowers, experts warn, the anti-corruption campaign will lose what little momentum it has gained in the past two months. Police visit Chinese blogger who exposed sex scandal (The Washington Post) UPDATE, 6:32 pm:  Journo Zhu Ruifeng now out of the police station… re Wang Keqin's weibo. — Louisa Limさん (@limlouisa) 2013年1月28日

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