"Sinocism is the Presidential Daily Brief for China hands"- Evan Osnos, New Yorker Correspondent and National Book Award Winner
- Chinese Image-Makers Race to Contain Scandal – NYTimes.com– On Thursday, a Hong Kong newspaper, Apple Daily, disclosed myriad details of Bo family dealings in line with those criticisms. His older brother, Bo Xiyong, has for nine years served under an assumed name as executive director and deputy general manager of China Everbright Holdings, a state-owned company that controls one of China’s major banks and an array of other businesses.Under the name Li Xueming, Bo Xiyong receives a $1.7 million annual salary and holds stock options worth nearly $25 million by also holding the position of vice chairman in one of the state company’s series of Hong Kong-traded subsidiaries, China Everbright International, according to a profile maintained by Bloomberg Businessweek. Until May 31 he also was deputy chairman of Hong Kong Construction Limited, a Chinese property developer.Senior Communist Party officials are known to frequently secure lucrative jobs in state-owned companies for family members and relatives, often through connections. Mr. Bo’s ties to Everbright, first published by Apple Daily, were also described by a person familiar with the company who refused to be named because of the political sensitivity of the issue.Two women the newspaper described as sisters of Bo Xilai’s wife, Gu Kailai, also show up in Hong Kong corporate records. A check of the records on Thursday showed that Gu Wangjiang has been a director of eight privately held companies in Hong Kong and that Gu Wangning has also been a director of one of these companies, Hangang Worldwide Ltd. Neither Gu Wangjiang, Gu Wangning nor Bo Xiyong could be reached for comment.
- North Korea rocket launch reportedly fails – latimes.com – BEIJING — North Korea launched a three-stage rocket from a missile base near the west coast city of Sinuiju today, claiming that it was carrying a weather satellite of purely civilian use. [Updated 4:35 p.m. Thursday, April 12: But U.S. officials said the rocket broke apart shortly after launch.]
- 人民日报-依法整治网络谣言取得阶段性成果 清理21万条信息 关闭42家网站 – 据介绍，相关部门近期就整治网络谣言采取了一系列行动和举措，除了依法查处和关闭了一批造谣传谣、疏于管理造成恶劣社会影响的网站，公安机关还对在网上编造谣言的李某、唐某等6人依法予以拘留，对在网上传播相关谣言的其他人员进行了教育训诫。目前，清理网络谣言的行动已经取得明显阶段性成果。3月中旬以来，据不完全统计，互联网信息管理部门会同通信、公安等部门清理的各类网络谣言信息已达21万多条，依法关闭的网站已达42家，网络环境有所改善。
- 人民日报-自觉遵守党纪国法 – 自觉遵守党纪国法
- 人民日报-各地党员干部群众表示 以实际行动维护改革发展稳定良好局面 –
- Stuxnet Loaded by Iran Double Agents | isssource.com – The Stuxnet virus that damaged Iran’s nuclear program was implanted by an Israeli proxy — an Iranian, who used a corrupt “memory stick.32,” former and serving U.S. intelligence officials said.
In the continuing battle to hold off the Iranian nuclear program, Iranian proxies have also been active in assassinating Iran’s nuclear scientists, these sources said. - 《联合晚报》：重庆打黑三万多人无法起诉无罪释放 – 红色恐怖
重庆打黑抓的三万多人
无法起诉无罪释放 - China puts on show of might over Bo Xilai’s military allies – The Washington Post– Half of last week was a public holiday in China, but it was a busy week in the barracks. In many military bases and academies, political education sessions were scheduled at short notice to hammer home the message of the Communist Party’s absolute leadership over the armed forces.“Everyone knows it’s about Bo Xilai, but we’re not supposed to talk about it,” said a young officer.
- 神秘霍瑞斯 – 产经快讯 – 21世纪网 – Dalian, XU ming, Huoruisi (Horas?) Investments, legal rep a Chinese with US citizenship named Cheng Yijun//
随着老板徐明的“失踪”，大连实德的诸多细节正在显影。本报记者调查得知，一家名叫上海霍瑞斯投资咨询有限公司的企业（下简称“上海霍瑞斯”），其股东发起人之一正是大连实德集团有限公司。隐身在这家不为人注意的公司背后的，是其现任法定代表人、一个有着多重神秘而复杂身份的美籍华人程毅君。程毅君与大连实德的渊源，其来有自。本报记者调查获悉，其在大陆活动轨迹的第一站，正是大连。1992年9月，程毅君主持了第四届大连国际服装节开幕式晚会。 - 组建百亿房地产并购基金 信达系试水收购不良房地产信托 – 宏观 – 21世纪网 – 核心提示： 房地产市场深度调控的持续，令行业并购整合的机会不可避免的升温。
- Bo Rumor Free-for-All Shows China Struggling to Control Internet – Bloomberg– “At times it was a free-for-all,” Bill Bishop, a Beijing- based independent media consultant says in the April 16 edition of Bloomberg Businessweek. “It seems the decision was made to let people blacken Bo’s name — that the Net was being used as a political tool.”..The central government struggles with its own ambivalence about the Internet and the Twitter-like microblogging service Weibo.“On the one hand, by allowing people to use Weibo, a lot of anger can get blown off, and you can do real-time monitoring of the problems facing China,” says Bishop. “On the other hand, if people start spending a lot of time on Weibo, it makes them feel much more negative about what is going on in this country.”
- 重庆市就万盛经开区发生群众聚集事件答记者问_新闻_腾讯网 – official statement on riot in a part of chongqing, unrelated everyone says to bo xilai
- Drones Are Techies’ New Darlings – WSJ.com– Silicon Valley is taking its penchant for programming to the skies.Thanks to a proliferation of inexpensive sensors, chips, cameras and other gizmos that can be tacked onto wannabe spy planes and helicopters, it’s easier than ever for technologists to build craft that fly themselves.The techies are sending the three-to-six foot wide drones, guided by computers, radios and soon cellphones, to survey fields, capture action shots from the air or follow them around to snap photos at optimal angles. About their only constraints: a 400-foot ceiling for amateur drones set by the Federal Aviation Administration—and battery life.
- Pentagon’s Asia leadership team missing in action | The Cable – As North Korea prepares to launch a missile, the Asia team in the Obama administration is working around the clock. But over at the Pentagon, several top Asia policy positions are completely vacant, forcing lower-level officials to pick up the slack.
- Old-Age Disability in China: Implications for Long-Term Care Policies in the Coming Decades | RAND– Old-age disability and long-term care (LTC) have not yet been well studied in China. Using logistic regressions and a prevalence ratio projection model, and considering international practices, this dissertation addresses three research questions:What are the key risk factors for old-age disability in China?
What are the projected numbers of older adults with disabilities in China in future decades through 2050?
How can China develop a feasible and sustainable LTC delivery and financing system to address projected growth in LTC needs of this population over the next four decades? - China’s New Yuan Loans Surge Ahead of Today’s GDP Report – Bloomberg – China’s new yuan loans were the most in a year and money-supply growth unexpectedly accelerated after Premier Wen Jiabao moved to bolster the economy by cutting banks’ required reserves and helping small companies get funding.
Local-currency-denominated loans were 1.01 trillion yuan ($160.1 billion) in March, the People’s Bank of China said yesterday, the biggest surprise above forecasts in more than a year. M2, the broadest measure of money supply, grew 13.4 percent from a year earlier. China’s foreign-exchange reserves, the world’s largest, rose to a record $3.31 trillion as of March 31 after dropping for the first time in more than a decade in the fourth quarter. - Angry Birds Creator in Talks With Baidu, Sohu in China – Bloomberg – Rovio Entertainment Oy, creator of the “Angry Birds” mobile-phone game, said it’s in talks with Chinese companies including Baidu Inc. (BIDU) and Sohu.com Inc. (SOHU) to work on winning players in the world’s biggest Web market.
- 王子犯法与庶民同罪_政经频道_财新网 – 重读习近平关于维护党的纯洁性的讲话，倍觉许多内容极为重要，其中“纪律面前人人平等，遵守纪律没有特权，执行纪律没有例外”，更是意味深长。
- Hu Shuli–Bo Xilai and Equal Justice – Caixin Online – In the latest development on the case of Bo Xiali, the Chinese Communist Party invited the public to draw its attention to the uniform application of the law in China
- Frank Talk – What CLSA’s Andy Rothman Thinks is the Biggest Misunderstanding in China – In our webcast last week on what to expect from China, Andy Rothman from CLSA outlined the major misconceptions about China. He believes the biggest myth that investors think about China is that its economy is primarily driven by exports. Using two charts which debunk this misconception, Andy explained that domestic investment and domestic consumption have long been the most significant drivers of China’s economic growth.
- InnoSpring Launches First U.S.-China Accelerator & Seed Fund, Backed By Kleiner Perkins & More | TechCrunch– As it stands today, InnoSpring is the first accelerator to focus on supporting American and Chinese startups to expand beyond their home countries and, although it will be in part focused on jumpstarting Chinese startups, its program is not restricted to founders hail from China, it is also looking to seed American startups with Chinese expansion strategies — in both the long-term and the short-term.Like those tech accelerators before it, InnoSpring will be offering a mix of services and support for its startups, including funding, mentoring, workshops, in-house resources like accounting, bookkeeping, and paralegal advisement, access to VCs and angel investors, as well as physical office space and professional services for both U.S. and Chinese startups looking to increase cross-border development.InnoSpring is being managed by Eugene Zhang, the co-founder of the TEEC Angel Fund and JEDA Technologies (and also formerly of Juniper Networks, Cisco and Sun). Zhang and team have located some impressive office space, which can accomodate as many as 40 startups during the accelerator’s 6-month startup bootcamp.
- CIA’s Secret Fear: High-Tech Border Checks Will Blow Spies’ Cover | Danger Room | Wired.com– In “the old days,” as one put it — that would be before 9/11 — deep-cover CIA operatives could use and discard false passports like hand wipes. “The only way immigration could tell if the passports were fake was to look at the stamps, paper, photo, and so on,” said another recently retired CIA operative, whose worked on sensitive projects under non-official cover. Operatives could land at, say, Dubai, with a passport with one false name, then pick up another from the local CIA station to register at the hotel and conduct a mission. Then the same operative could return the country several times under different names, repeating the process.Biometrics are making that impossible. Even crossing the border with a real identity, then donning a fake one in-country, presents its own risks. “When you go to check into a hotel room for a meeting with an asset, or even rent a car to drive to the meeting — or hold the meeting in the car — many hotels and car rental agencies upload their customer data, including passport number, to immigration every day,” the former spook notes. “Most countries are looking for visa overstays. But when you show up on the list as never having entered the country … it brings the police around to ask questions.”If the CIA is working in concert with a local intelligence agency, as it commonly does in E.U. countries, Jordan, Thailand and other spots, undercover entries and exits can be smoothed over.But “unilateral ops” — where the agency is trying to conceal its activities from the host country — “have deteriorated significantly” because of the new technologies, the career spook said.
- CapitalVue News: http://www.capitalvue.com/home/CE-news/inset/@10063/post/10802344– Global financial and business information provider Bloomberg yesterday sued Shanghai Great Wisdom (601519), a Chinese provider of real-time financial data, for compensation of five million yuan, alleging the latter infringed on Bloomberg’s rights in terminal design, reports 163.com.Both parties appeared before the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate Court yesterday, and Zhang Changhong, the chairman of Great Wisdom, said the terminals were developed by the company in 2010, with lackluster sales volume to date.
- China braces for next act in leadership drama | Reuters – Dai Qing said that while leaders will remain united for now, most of them were relieved by his ouster.
But she said broader worries will fester about whether leaders can keep a tight ship while tackling needed economic and political reforms.
“There’ll be a smooth 18th Party Congress without Bo Xilai. The central leadership has achieved unity for that,” she said.
“But then we have to see act two,” she added. “There are certainly still rifts, because each of them (leaders) has his own interests and interest groups to take care of.”..
The leaders have agreed on ridding the roster of Bo, but they are less likely to find accord on how to move ahead, said a Beijing editor with close links to serving and retired officials.
“In handling this incident, there have been tensions over whether to take a gentler or tougher approach (toward Bo), whether to go slower or faster,” said the editor, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing restrictions on comments to reporters.
“All sides are committed to stability; nobody wants a public rift over this,” said the editor. “But the complications will come if, say, Hu tries to take advantage of this incident to take greater control of selecting successors.” - 新浪微博治理不实信息 标记“此条微博未经证实”_TechWeb– sina rolls out another function on weibo 2 try 2 halt rumors4月12日消息，继“微博辟谣”功能后，新浪微博今日推出新功能，加大对微博不实信息的治理。
有网友发现，今日上午@中国民间地震研究中心 发布一条关于地震预报的微博，随后新浪对这条微博加注红色标记：“此条微博未经证实，请勿轻信”。 - NIC Personnel – Paul Heer
National Intelligence Officer for East Asia
Dr. Heer joined the NIC from the CIA, where he was a member of the Senior Analytic Service in the Directorate of Intelligence. During his CIA career, he worked as a political and foreign policy analyst on China and Southeast Asia, and as an analytical manager and editor.Dr. Heer was a Visiting Intelligence Fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations (1999-2000) and was elected a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations in 2001. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Loras College (Dubuque, Iowa), a Master of Arts in History from the University of Iowa, and a Ph.D. in Diplomatic History from The George Washington University. - U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission provides new details of growing factionalism inside the secretive Chinese Communist Party – Washington Times – someone w axe to grind leaking to gertz//
A recent report by the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission provides new details of growing factionalism inside the secretive Chinese Communist Party…The congressional report is further evidence undermining the theories of the U.S. intelligence community’s highest-ranking China analyst Paul Heer.Mr. Heer, currently National Intelligence Officer for East Asia, wrote in 2000 that China’s leaders are a “house united” and that any analyst who views Chinese policies toward the United States as driven by factionalism are “misguided and even dangerous.”It could not be learned if Mr. Heer continues to hold that view as the top U.S. intelligence analyst on China. - Inside the Ring: Counter-space battle craft – Washington Times– A defense official said the X-37 is a key element of the Pentagon’s new Air Sea Battle Concept to closely link Air Force and Navy capabilities for defeating China’s advanced military systems such as anti-satellite weapons, anti-ship ballistic missiles and cyberwarfare capabilities.In a future conflict with China, the X-37 is slated to play a key role in knocking out Chinese space sensors that would provide key targeting data for the DF-21D anti-ship missile.Pentagon officials, however, refuse to say publicly that the X-37 is part of future space warfare systems and insist it is a test bed for research.Chinese military writers have said the X-37 is part of secret U.S. plans for space warfare against China.
- 重手惩治薄熙来 中共剑指“三重罪”_多维新闻网 – 在中共的传统思维里，一直遵从的是毛时代遗留下来的“党外无党，党内无派”的政治思想，而且在粉碎“四人邦”以后已经极少提“路线斗争”四字了，可是现在突然又说要“在路线原则上立场坚定”，是否意味着党内已经出现政见不一致的派系？除了中央的主流思想外，薄熙来是不是就是另一条路线？或许在中共高层的眼中，薄熙来在重庆的所作所为已经表明他其实是意图在重庆另立山头，大搞独立王国，推行错误路线，兴唱红打黑文革遗风，甚至有对抗中央、篡党夺权之可能？从种种迹象来看，这种猜测的可能性是极大的。
- Rectified.name 正名 – Good new China group blog, hope they can keep up the pace
- China microblog battle goes upstream | beyondbrics | News and views on emerging markets from the Financial Times – FT.com– Now, a new operation is under way, with censors aiming to increase controls at the source: journalists at several Chinese media say their employers have started installing new restrictions on weibo use.A reporter at a Communist party newspaper in Guangdong province said all editorial staff had been requested to register their weibo accounts with editorial management. A journalist at a military newspaper said editors had threatened staff that they could be detained on criminal charges if they spread sensitive information through weibo. At a magazine run by a major state media group, a new committee was set up to supervise how editorial staff use social media. “The committee has the power to punish anyone who reveals secrets or spreads rumours through weibo,” said one reporter at the magazine.
- 多款茶叶被曝农残超标 张一元吴裕泰上榜_新闻_腾讯网 – 4月11日，国际环保组织绿色和平在其官网发布《2012茶叶农药调查报告》，报告显示，经对北京、成都、海口等地的茶叶产品抽查检验发现，多个知名品牌产品均存在不同程度的农药残留。
- Suspect in Chinese murder case set up company on Dorset business park – Telegraph – Gu Kailai, said by the authorities in Beijing to be “highly suspected” of killing Neil Heywood in a hotel room last year, also gave her address as a flat above an office block in Bournemouth which she supposedly shared with a French architect.
Their company never filed any accounts and despite being a high-flying lawyer in her native China with links to American law firms, she never practised in this country.
It is thought that Mrs Gu – now thought to be under house arrest along with her husband Bo Xilai, who has been suspended as Communist Party chief in Chongqing – may have set up Adad Ltd to give herself an official British base and an air of respectability. - CapitalVue News: http://www.capitalvue.com/home/CE-news/inset/@10063/post/10802294– he average transaction price of high-end residential housing in Beijing rose 15.26 percent quarter-on-quarter to 48,600 yuan per square meter in the first quarter, while transaction area hit 54,500 square meters, reports 163.com, citing DTZ Holdings.DTZ defines high-end residential housing as those which cost more than 40,000 yuan per square meter.According to DTZ, the average transaction price of high-end residential housing in Beijing in the third quarter last year dropped 0.8 percent from the last quarter to 41,700 yuan per square meter.The average transaction price in the fourth quarter of 2011 inched up 1.05 percent quarter-on-quarter to 42,100 yuan per square meter.Wei Dong, a research manager at DTZ, said no new land will be supplied within the Third Ring Road during the period of the 12th Five-Year Plan, and this resulted in the increasing prices of high-end residential housing.
A more flexible policy on the approval of pre-sale licenses was another factor behind the rising prices, said Wei.
- CapitalVue News: http://www.capitalvue.com/home/CE-news/inset/@10063/post/10802314– A number of commercial banks in some cities resumed the practice of offering discounts of 10-15 percent for mortgages for first-home buyers, with the final loan rates to be decided based on the applicants’ credit record, the type of home to be purchased, loan scale and duration, reports China Securities Journal, citing industry insiders.Some industry experts and bank insiders said the discounts will sharply lower costs for home buyers, and encourage buyers with inelastic demand to enter the market.
- CapitalVue News: http://www.capitalvue.com/home/CE-news/inset/@10063/post/10799084– corruption pays//April 11 — Kweichow Moutai (600519) announced cash dividends of 39.97 yuan for every
10 shares held, the highest dividend payment in the history of China’s A share market, reports Shanghai Securities News, citing a company filing.The spirits maker posted a 73.49 percent year-on-year rise in 2011 net profit to 8.76 billion yuan on revenue of 18.4 billion yuan, an increase of 58.19 percent. Operating profit rose 72.27 percent to 12.34 billion yuan.Based on total equity at the end of 2011, the earnings distribution plan will cost Kweichow Moutai up to 4.15 billion yuan. - An Ancient Chinese Instrument Is Making a Comeback – NYTimes.com – For much of the 20th century, the contemplative guqin — the favored instrument of Confucius — has lacked an understanding audience and been eclipsed by showier musical instruments, including Western imports like piano and violin. But, after decades in the shadows of China’s musical life, the guqin is making a comeback, riding a wave of renewed interest in the nation’s traditional culture and the government’s efforts to promote this.
- Peaceful ideals under fire in S.China Sea-Global Times– A Philippine warship was at a standoff with a Chinese patrol vessel and fishing boat Wednesday around Huangyan Islet of the Nansha Islands Wednesday. The attempt by the Philippines to expel and capture Chinese boats was not successful. The standoff continued as of last night while both sides expressed wishes to end the impasse peacefully.The standoff happened in China’s conventional fishing areas. The Philippines has never had actual control of the Huangyan Islet. The response of the Chinese side has followed normal procedure when its assets were under military threat by the Philippines.The patrol vessel can effectively protect Chinese fishing boats and crew without the participation of China’s navy as the incident has showed. This is progress in China exerting sovereignty over the Nansha Islands.This reaction would change the expectations of other parties concerning China’s attitude toward South China Sea disputes. Peace and stability in the area are still what China strives for but it will not make unprincipled concessions to the recklessness of neighboring countries. A resolute response to protecting its interests should be expected from China.
- Bo Xilai Scandal and the Mysterious Neil Heywood – NYTimes.com– He earned enough to live at Le Leman Lake, one of the capital’s suburban gated communities, and to educate his children at the Chinese campus of Britain’s Dulwich College. The private intelligence firm Hakluyt, founded by former officials with MI6, the British secret intelligence service, said Mr. Heywood had occasionally worked as one of its associates, helping prepare due-diligence reports on Chinese companies for investors. That association, even if it had ended months before his death, inspired speculation that he was a spy, although an official with the Foreign Office in London effectively denied that.He held a number of other jobs as well. He worked as an adviser to the Aston Martin car company in Beijing, and for several years he ran Heywood Boddington Associates, a consultancy for British businesses in China.Some who met Mr. Heywood in China said they considered him as a dilettante who hid behind a screen of pretenses, and he was known for turning up in a rumpled suit of beige linen.“He liked to give the air of having a secret hinterland, to give the impression that he might be an intelligence officer, that what he was up to was all hush-hush,” said one China analyst who met him several times. “But I came to the conclusion that the only thing that really sustained him was his connections to the Bos.”
- Did Li Yang of Crazy English just threaten to shoot his wife with a gun?: Shanghaiist – “In America you should be killed by your husband with gun. This is real American way. You’re so lucky to be in China!” That’s allegedly what Li Yang, founder of Crazy English and self-styled evangelist of the English language, sent his wife, Kim Lee in a text message recently.
- Photo Essay: China’s “Rat Tribe”– The evening sun sits low in the smoggy Beijing sky. Beneath a staid, maroon apartment block, Jiang Ying, 24, is stirring from her bed after having slept through the day. Day is night and night is day anyway, in the window-less world she inhabits three floors below ground.Pint-sized and spiky-haired, Jiang Ying is among an estimated one million migrant workers who live beneath this city. Like millions of Chinese who come from across the country with dreams of making it big in the capital, she had travelled to Beijing from her native Inner Mongolia three years ago, and now works as at a hip bar in the heart of Beijing’s nightclub district. But even so, she can barely make ends meet.Faced with sky-high property prices, living underground is often the only option for this legion of low-waged migrant workers, who make up one-third of Beijing’s estimated 20 million people.
- Jiang Weiping: Gu Kailai has HK ID and Singapore green card: Shanghaiist – Jiang Weiping (姜维平), a journalist who was jailed for investigating Bo’s corruption, told Voice of America that Gu Kailai, Bo Xilai’s wife, has Hong Kong ID and Singapore greencard.
“She does not only have Hong Kong ID, but also a Singapore green card. I am sure, because she has transferred her assets to Hong Kong and sent her child to Singapore for education, where he learnt English. Gu Kailai approximately spent three to five years travelling around the world, mainly to Singapore and the UK,” Jiang Weiping said in the interview.
Jiang once worked for Mingpao, a Hong Kong-based newspaper related to Beijing and had written articles in pseudonyms exposing the corruption of high-ranking Communist Party officials including Bo Xilai. - 李阳妻子曝光二人短信 称被威胁要战斗至死 | 新浪微博-随时随地分享身边的新鲜事儿– Crazy English teacher Li Yang threatens to kill his wife, she exposes him and sms on Sina Weibo李阳妻子曝光二人短信 称被威胁要战斗至死
李阳(@李阳疯狂英语)与妻子离婚案尚未尘埃落定，今天9时29分李阳妻子Kim(@丽娜华的Mom)爆料称李阳 威胁她并称要杀了她，并曝光了相关短信截图，kim称“李阳有钱和名利。不怕法律的后果。威胁要战斗到死，杀了我。今天回到派出所和改变锁。” - Bo Xilai’s Gift to Chongqing: A Legal Mess – China Real Time Report – WSJ – The problems largely stem from Bo’s “smash the black” campaign, a furious effort to crackdown on corruption and organized crime carried about by former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun that, by all accounts, involved misuse of both the courts and the police. Quite apart from Bo’s own offenses, the central authorities of the Party-state are now faced with how to address the treatment of individuals who were punished during the last three years, perhaps unjustly, for their alleged criminal acts.
- 薄熙来被双规 谷开来涉嫌海伍德命案被拘捕 – 中国 政治 – RFI– 消息人士称，海伍德死后两日,谷与海伍德妻子王某在重庆一咖啡馆见面,武警把门清场，据说可以听到谷的抽泣声。最后，王某同意不解剖，认可官方的饮酒过度致死结论，遗体火化。作为薄瓜瓜英语教师的海伍德和大连籍的王某认识，谷是介绍人。海伍德命案被国际媒体披露后，她以匿名在北京接受路透社采访，路透的报道中描述，她坚称火化的决定是其自主决定，但一直哭。
- Fearful Final Hours for Briton Who Died in China – WSJ.com– The day before his death in the fog-shrouded Chinese city of Chongqing, Neil Heywood sensed that something was amiss.The British businessman had been summoned on short notice to a meeting in Chongqing in early November with representatives of the family of Bo Xilai, the local Communist Party chief, according to an account by a friend whom Mr. Heywood contacted at the time. Mr. Heywood told the friend he was “in trouble.”..
Mr. Heywood felt he had reason to be nervous, although he had taken steps to protect himself. He had told the same friend earlier that he had left documents detailing the overseas investments of Mr. Bo’s family with his lawyer in Britain as an “insurance policy” in case anything happened to him.He had also told friends that he was concerned about his safety after falling out with Mr. Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, who he said knew about the documents and was convinced she had been betrayed by someone in the family’s “inner circle” of friends and advisers. - Dealing With Plane Delays, Chinese- Style: Storm The Taxiway | Sinocism– Passengers at Shanghai’s Pudong Airport became so frustrated with a flight delay that they stormed a taxiway and halted a plane.In the US I assume this would be a violation of one or more federal statutes and you would be looking at significant fines if not jail time and a select spot on the no fly list. China does not appear to have any “federal” statutes governing passenger aviation.But in China you get compensation. Yes, the folks who rushed the tarmac and halted a moving airplane received 1000 RMB in compensation each for the efforts.
- Protests and Clashes Are Seen in Chongqing – NYTimes.com– Thousands of Chinese protesters clashed with police and uniformed security forces wielding batons in an area of Chongqing on Wednesday, according to news reports and images posted by activists.The clashes in Chongqing, a fast-growing urban center, broke out after crowds gathered to protest economic issues in the Wansheng district of the sprawling municipality, just south of the main city of Chongqing and the epicenter of a widening political scandal that has shaken China.There were no indications of a connection between the protests, which began on Tuesday, and the announcement shortly after by central government authorities in Beijing that the former party secretary of Chongqing, Bo Xilai, had been stripped of his post in the Politburo and his wife arrested as the prime suspect in the killing of a British businessman.
- Excerpt: At Goldman Sachs Servicer, ‘Total Disaster’ – ProPublica – Yesterday, we published “The Great American Foreclosure Story,” our latest Kindle Single. The narrative gives readers a comprehensive look at the foreclosure crisis. Part of that story is the government’s inadequate response, particularly its Home Affordable Modification Program, HAMP. In the excerpt below, Chris Wyatt, a former employee of Litton Loan Servicing, then a Goldman Sachs subsidiary, tells what it was like at the company during the program’s first, crucial years.
- So Much For Predictions About China Politics | Sinocism– I am going to double down with three more predictions:1. The Bo affair was cathartic for the preparations for the 18th Party Congress and a boon for Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping in rooting out Bo and neutralizing his allies. The leadership understands that either they hang together or they will hang separately and so we should expect no more public indications of elite turmoil between now and the 18th.2. A respected fortune teller’s prediction for Xi Jinping has been circulating among certain Beijing circles. In this prediction, Xi in his first term will bring major reform to China, though the version I have heard is fuzzy on whether that means Western-style political reform or a reinvigoration of economic reforms with more intraparty Democracy and transparency. Either way it is a glimmer of hope in an otherwise cynical environment. Whether or not you believe in fortune telling (算命), you should consider that soothsayers’ predictions about Chinese politics are at least as reliable as China pundits’. (Remember all those predictions about Egypt, the Jasmine Revolution and China?)3. Partisan calls by GOP lawmakers for hearings on the Obama Administration’s refusal to grant asylum to Wang Lijun could prove embarrassing unless those pro-life lawmakers are certain Wang Lijun never oversaw forced abortions in any of his jurisdictions during his long career in the Public Security system. Good luck with that…
- Get all the reposts and comments of a Sina Weibo post: Introducing a new service from JMSC | The Rice Cooker 電飯煲 –