"Sinocism is the Presidential Daily Brief for China hands"- Evan Osnos, New Yorker Correspondent and National Book Award Winner
I finally uploaded more videos from our August trip to Tibet, so if you want to see parts of the Mt. Kailash/Kangrinboqe Peak Kora click here.
Today’s Links:
THE ESSENTIAL EIGHT
Leader Taps Into Chinese Classics in Seeking to Cement Power – NYTimes.com another excellent piece from Chris Buckley // Their influence on Mr. Xi is likely to become clearer when a meeting of party leaders starting in just over a week endorses his proposals for “rule of law.” Quite unlike the Western liberal version, Mr. Xi’s “rule of law” looks more like the “rule by law” advocated by the Legalists, said Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society in New York. Mr. Xi wants party power to be applied more equitably and cleanly, but he does not want law to circumscribe that power, said Mr. Schell. This has created an “enormous amount of misinterpretation in the West that thinks ‘rule of law’ is rule of law in a very Western Enlightenment sense of the term,” he said. Mr. Xi’s reverence for Confucius is a far cry from Mao, who attacked Confucian traditions as feudal dregs, to be erased by revolutionary fervor.
Related: Han Feizi: Basic Writings-Amazon Trenchant, sophisticated, and cynical, Han Feizi has been read in every age and is still of interest today when people are more than ever concerned with the nature and use of power. Han Feizi (280?-233 B.C.), a prince of Han, was a representative of the Fa-chia, or Legalist, school of philosophy and produced the final and most readable exposition of its theories. His handbook for the ruler deals with the problems of strengthening and preserving the state, the way of the ruler, the use of power, and punishment and favor. Ironically, the ruler most influenced by Han Feizi, the king of Qin, eventually sent Han Feizi to prison, where he later committed suicide.
Related: 张维为：了解习近平把握中国大势 ——推介《习近平谈_共识网
Related: Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power: Amazon Yan Xuetong 2011 book
Hong Kong’s Occupy movement has ‘spun out of control’, says CY Leung | South China Morning Post He said the government would continue to try to convince protesters to leave the roads they occupy and that police would only use minimum force if clearance is necessary. On the chance of a dialogue with protesters, he said there is “zero chance” that the protesters’ demands such as calling the National People’s Congress to retract its decision and insisting on civil nomination as part of the chief executive candidate nominating mechanism would be realised. Leung also reiterated that he would not step down. “I believe my stepping down will not solve the problem since [the protesters] are demanding the National People’s Congress to withdraw its decision and civil nomination, which is impossible,” he said.
Related: An open letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Hong Kong people’s well-being | 香港專上學生聯會 We, as students, urge to settle these issues of Hong Kong: 1) The HKSAR government must bear the sole responsibility, be accountable to Hong Kong citizens and rectify herself 2) To establish a democratic system that affirms equal rights 3) To uphold the principle of “One Country, Two Systems”: Hong Kong problems be settled in Hong Kong; Politics to be settled by Politics Yours sincerely, Hong Kong Federation of Students Scholarism 11 October, 2014
Related: In Beijing, Young Chinese See Little to Cheer in Hong Kong Protests – NYTimes.com On social media and over shared meals at restaurants, many young professionals express suspicion and even hostility toward the students and the Occupy Central protest movement. They accuse the students of selfishly blocking roads and disrupting the lives of ordinary residents; others, parroting government propaganda, blame Western governments for orchestrating one of the most high-profile challenges to Beijing’s authority in years.
Related: Some Chinese Leaders Claim U.S. and Britain Are Behind Hong Kong Protests – NYTimes There is no dispute that diplomats representing the United States and other Western governments have met on occasion with members of the pro-democracy camp, nor that American-funded nongovernmental organizations have invited Hong Kong citizens to conferences extolling the merits of democracy. But in several dozen interviews with protesters and protest leaders over the last week, all emphatically denied that their movement had been directed or manipulated in any way by any foreign government. The United States has also denied playing any guiding role here.
Related: 美国对“颜色革命”为何乐此不疲？（望海楼）
Young people of Taiwan and Hong Kong refusing to accept the unification of ‘Greater China’–Fairfax Media On these trajectories, with a defiantly autonomous generation of Taiwanese facing off against a rich, heavily-armed and uncompromising Chinese Communist Party, veteran observers warn that the island could once again become the most dangerous flashpoint that stands between the two most important nuclear powers, the United States and China. “Limited cross-strait reconciliation has lulled the world into complacency,” says Jerome Cohen, a lawyer who is held in high esteem on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. “The low-hanging fruits of economic cooperation have all been gathered and the Mainland – now under increasingly assertive and harsh new leadership – seems less attractive than ever to most Taiwanese. In a few years ‘the Taiwan problem’ will again make fussing over some rocks in the East China Sea and South China Sea look like child’s play.”
Top court acts to curb paid Web posts, deletions–China Daily- People who offer money to network service providers or posters of information to have material deleted will be subject to penalties, under a guideline issued by the Supreme People’s Court on Thursday. The guideline, which has been in the making for two years, invalidates any agreement whose purpose is the deletion of online information in public space. It would apply, for example, in the case of a company that wants a negative public comment about it removed, or when a poster has second thoughts about a comment he made and wants to retract it. The court aims to clarify who is responsible in cases in which online posts are illegally weeded out, or when people are paid to post favorable or unfavorable comments.
Related: Parsing the New Internet Rules of China’s Supreme Court | China Copyright and Media Yesterday, the Supreme People’s Court issued a document with the – predictably convoluted – title “Supreme People’s Court Regulations concerning Some Questions of Applicable Law in Handing Civil Dispute Cases involving the Use of Information Networks to Harm Personal Rights and Interests”. This document provides instructions to People’s Courts on certain aspect of dealing with civil cases involving harm to personality rights, including the right to privacy, portrait rights and reputational rights. (Full disclosure, I was involved in an academic project that provided input into the drafting process). It has been drafted to supplement the broad language of Article 36 of the Tort Liability Law, which sets forth a basis of liability for the online infringement of citizens’ rights, and provides for basic remedial measures. The Article’s wording left many questions of procedure and substance unanswered, meaning that courts (which in China’s civil law-based system have considerably less leeway to interpret the law, and do not create binding precedents) often faced considerable difficulties in handling these cases.
Related: Supreme People’s Court Regulations concerning Some Questions of Applicable Law in Handing Civil Dispute Cases involving the Use of Information Networks to Harm Personal Rights and Interests | China Copyright and Media In order to correctly hear civil dispute cases involving the use of information networks to harm personal rights and interests, on the basis of the provisions of the “General Principles of the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China”, the “Tort Liability Law of the People’s Republic of China”, the “National People’s Congress Standing Committee Decision concerning Strengthening Online Information Protection”, the “Civil Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China”, and by integration with judicial practice, these Regulations are formulated.
Related: 规范网络侵权案件审理 最高法再出司法解释-法治频道-新华网 translation Xinhua: Standardizing Case Trials of Online Torts, the Supreme People’s Court Issues a Judicial Interpretation
Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany – The Intercept Snowden may get another wing to his palace, and a couple more phoenixes…// The TAREX guide lists South Korea, Germany, and Beijing, China as sites where the NSA has deployed a “forward-based TAREX presence;” TAREX personnel also operate at domestic NSA centers in Hawaii, Texas, and Georgia. It also states that TAREX personnel are assigned to U.S. embassies and other “overseas locations,” but does not specify where. The document does not say what the “forward-based” personnel are doing, or how extensive TAREX operations are. But China, South Korea, and Germany are all home to large telecommunications equipment manufacturers, and China is known to be a key target of U.S. intelligence activities.// but is any hardware made in Beijing?
Related: 斯诺登：美国安局在北京设“定点袭击前哨站”
China weaves global net to snag crooked officials – Xinhua “Our campaign to seize fleeing officials and retrieve what they have stolen will become an important aspect of our political and diplomatic ties with other nations… focused on persuading foreign governments not to harbor these criminals,” said Huang Shuxian, vice secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), in an exclusive interview with Xinhua. China needs new, more effective international pacts on extradition and judicial assistance factored into the anti-corruption mechanism, said Huang Huang oversees overseas coordination for the central anti-corruption coordination group. His office analyzes the cases of officials on the lam, and supervises their pursuit. The Supreme People’s Court, the People’s Bank of China and ministries of foreign affairs and public security are all involved.
Related: 黄树贤:腐败分子跑到哪里都要一追到底—
Related: 中央反腐败协调小组首设国际追逃工作办公室_
Andrew S. Erickson and Adam P. Liff | The Danger of China’s “New Type of Great-Power Relations” Slogan | Foreign Affairs Andrew S. Erickson and Adam P. Liff // The so-called Thucydides Trap to the contrary, history tells us that the trajectories of rising powers can be shaped in powerful ways by the leading power’s behavior and rhetoric. And on those terms, “new type of great-power relations” is a deeply flawed concept. The United States must jettison it and replace it with one that charts a clear pathway for the type of twenty-first-century great power that the United States wants China to become. A more effective vision for U.S.-Chinese relations should be positive and aspirational, designed to shape Beijing’s decision-making by tying China’s eventual attainment of great-power status to behaving like a twenty-first-century great power, including by making positive contributions to international peace, stability, prosperity, and especially by behaving responsibly toward its neighbors. That would in effect be a truly new type of great-power relations — and Washington must consistently lead by example. For many, U.S. Asia policy is directly linked to Obama’s legacy. Yet his administration is increasingly focused elsewhere, with real-world consequences. For the Obama administration’s China policy, it’s time for proactive leadership.
U.S. Opposing China’s Answer to World Bank – NYTimes.com in quiet conversations with China’s potential partners, American officials have lobbied against the development bank with unexpected determination and engaged in a vigorous campaign to persuade important allies to shun the project, according to senior United States officials and representatives of other governments involved. The dispute, the latest manifestation of Chinese-American competition in Asia, could escalate in coming weeks, as Beijing pushes to confirm South Korea and Australia as founding partners of the bank in time for Mr. Xi to formally announce it at a summit meeting of Asian leaders in November. President Obama is scheduled to attend the meeting, and Washington is pressing the two countries to reject the Chinese plan. Beijing has asked dozens of nations to contribute funds to the bank, which it calls the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
BUSINESS, ECONOMY AND TRADE
China’s Li Says Economic Growth Quality Important as Pace – Bloomberg In a speech to businessmen and politicians in the German port of Hamburg today, Li repeated that China still expects economic growth of about 7.5 percent this year. Though China may exceed or miss that target, the nation doesn’t “face a hard landing as some say,” he said. China has already achieved its employment target for 2014 this month after the economy added 1 million jobs, said Li, who visited Berlin yesterday. “Stamina and perseverance” are as important as speed in the economic policy mix, underlining why China has avoided stimulus measures including using monetary policy to help meet its growth target, he said.
Li says China able to keep around 7.5-pct growth – Xinhua China can keep its economic growth rate within a “reasonable range,” he told over 600 officials and business leaders at a China-Germany economic and technological cooperation forum. A pace around the 7.5 percent target — whether slightly higher or lower — will be acceptable as long as employment is guaranteed, household income raised and quality and efficiency improved, added the premier. Meanwhile, he reaffirmed Beijing’s commitment to the opening-up policy, stressing that opening-up is a basic national policy related to China’s development and destiny.
China’s central bank sees ‘very low’ risk of hard landing | Reuters Ma Jun told a panel on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank fall meetings in Washington that the property sector, which accounts for 20 percent of total investment in China, was the main downside risk to the Chinese economy. However, he said the sector was not the only driver of growth. “I think the chance of a hard landing is very low,” Ma said.
Expert Questions Whether China’s Urbanization Will Take Up Housing Slack – China Real Time Report – WSJ But those figures can be misleading, says Li Gan, an economics professor at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu, who crunched them from official data. In a recent presentation, he said that the annual housing supply in China is still at least 1.6 times as large as incremental demand. “Urbanization does not yield as much housing demand as you think it would,” said Mr. Gan, adding that many developers, government officials and researchers might disagree with his findings.
Free exchange: Unproductive production | The Economist There is another, more worrying factor behind the deceleration in productivity, however: bad lending and investment decisions. Financial development, handled well, should promote growth by improving the allocation of resources. But the researchers from the central bank find a strongly negative correlation in China between growth in lending and in TFP. That is an indication that state-owned banks, which still dominate China’s financial sector, are not disbursing enough credit to the country’s most deserving companies. And the economy is consuming more and more capital. China’s incremental capital-output ratio (ICOR), a measure of how much investment it takes to achieve each percentage point of growth, rose to 5.4 in 2012 from 3.6 over the preceding two decades, according to the World Bank. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan were far more efficient during their high-growth phases, with ICORs of 2.7-3.2.
Chinese banks relax mortgage rules-Dow Jones Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. , the biggest Chinese lender by assets, and China Construction Bank Corp. , the second-largest, will both allow home owners with no mortgage debt to purchase a second home at the more attractive terms typically offered to first-time home buyers. They also pledged to offer first-time home buyers discounts that would lower their mortgage rates by as much as nearly two percentage points from the current benchmark of 6.55 per cent.
Agile’s Billionaire Chairman Under Control of China Prosecutors – Bloomberg Agile Property Holdings Ltd. (3383), the Chinese real estate developer whose shares have been halted since Oct. 3, said its billionaire founder and Chairman Chen Zhuolin is under the control of Chinese prosecutors. Prosecutors in Kunming in southwestern China have required Chen, 52, to stay at “a designated residence” since the evening of Sept. 30, Agile said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange yesterday. The company didn’t say why Chen received the order.
Former Hanlong Executive Charged on Insider Trading – Bloomberg Xiao Hui, also known as Steven Xiao, a former managing director of the unit, is accused of persuading his wife and other parties to acquire shares and securities in Bannerman Resources Ltd. and Sundance Resources Ltd. while he had information on takeover bids for the companies, according to Australia’s corporate regulator. No plea was entered to the charges and Xiao made no application for bail at a hearing at Sydney’s Central Local Court, the Australian Securities & Investments Commission said today in an e-mailed statement. Xiao arrived in Australia at about 7 a.m. local time accompanied by Australian Federal Police officers following his extradition from Hong Kong.
Price of High-Speed Trains Expected to See Further Declines this Year – Caixin The average price of a high-speed train is expected to be 7 million yuan lower compared to the previous year as sources cites reduced purchases of foreign components and larger-scale production as major factors. China Railway Corp. (CRC) arranged the first round of bidding to procure high-speed trains this year in August and announced September 22 that China CNR Corp. Ltd. and CSR Corp. Ltd., the country’s two largest producers of railroad equipment, were awarded purchase orders.
POLITICS AND LAW
人民民主专政不可须臾离开–来源： 《红旗文稿》2014/19 作者： 梁 柱 more in Red Flag on class struggle…lots of caveats about excess in the past, but the recent frequency of this discussions seems noteworthy. This essay–The People’s Democratic Dictatorship Can’t Be Left in a Flash–by Liang Zhu. Nervousness in some quarters about the Fourth Plenum means about “governing the country in accordance with law”? Any reader insight appreciated // 毫无疑问，马克思主义的阶级斗争理论和阶级分析方法，
依法治国与坚持人民民主专政-来源： 《红旗文稿》2014/19 作者： 刘润为 当务之急是，
President Xi stresses implementation, communication of policies – Xinhua President Xi Jinping instructed Party officials on Saturday to implement the policies and decisions of the central leadership. Party committees of all levels should be more effective in ensuring smooth communication from the central leadership to grassroots, said Xi in a written instruction to a national meeting of secretaries-general of Party committees. Without solid implementation, any ambitious goal or optimistic blueprint is worthless, he wrote.
江苏原省委秘书长落马 其子被指在天津呼风唤雨_新闻_腾讯网 secretary general of Jiangsu provincial party committee Zhao Xiaolin detained…his son reportedly had lots of dealings in Tianjin where he was known by some as the “most awesome real estate developer”…wonder what Zhang Gaoli thinks about some of the recent Tianjin-related detentions //
中纪委再“双杀” 落马高官赵少麟系徐才厚校友-搜狐新闻 Zhao Xiaolin was a classmate of Xu Caihou // 一个是徐才厚的校友（哈尔滨军事工程学院）兼老乡（山西），
何家成被查或与其担任国企监事会主席经历有关_网易新闻中心 v
网曝九把刀图书被封杀 新片上映暂不受影响|九把刀|新片上映_凤凰娱乐 report
中央综治委恢复原名_政经频道_财新网 The Central Comprehensive Social Management Commission of the Communist Party of China has changed its name back to Central Public Security Comprehensive Management Commission, its name before September 2011, Meng Jianzhu revealed in a July speech recently publicized // 官方消息显示，
人民日报揭秘习近平为何点名批利益集团
China Jails Two Former Wukan Village Protest Leaders For ‘Graft’ Authorities in the rebel village of Wukan in southern China’s Guangdong province have jailed two former local officials who led a long-running campaign against land grabs, forcing them to withdraw from village-level elections, their families told RFA on Friday. Hong Ruichao and Yang Semao, who had served on the village commmittee following protests in 2011, were tried for “accepting bribes” by a local court in July, on what their relatives said were trumped-up charges. Yang was jailed for two years, while Hong received a four-year prison term, Hong’s sister Hong Ruiqing told RFA.
中央第一轮巡视整改情况公布：一把手成重灾区|一把手|
Cult members sentenced to death in east China – Xinhua Eastern Lightning cultists // Zhang Fan and Zhang Lidong, cult members who committed the crime of intentional homicide in May in Zhaoyuan City, east China’s Shandong Province, were sentenced to death Saturday by a court, with another accomplice, Lyu Yingchun, given a life sentence.
Zhou Ruijin, voice of Deng Xiaoping reforms, returns to support Xi’s corruption crackdown | South China Morning Post Zhang Lifan , a party historian previously with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said Zhou’s commentary was unlikely to generate the same level of public support for Xi’s anti-corruption drive as his essays did for Deng in 1991. “It’s likely that Zhou received some heads-up from the top leadership to write something ahead of the fourth plenum to garner public support. But he’s too far away from the core [of the party] to play the role he did 23 years ago,” Zhang said. “The piece is more like his understanding of the party’s policy mixed with his personal advice.” // his piece 皇甫平再度出山撰文：反腐即将从闪电战打到攻坚战
Chinese Authorities Make Arrests in Attempt to Prevent Pro-Democracy Campaigns on Mainland – NYTimes In all, human rights advocates say that more than 40 people across the country have been taken into police custody since a campaign of civil disobedience over the pace of democratization in Hong Kong began nearly two weeks ago. Some of those arrested have already been charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a charge that carries up to three years in jail.
FOREIGN AND DEFENSE AFFAIRS
PACAF commander: Despite intercepts, most East China Sea encounters safe – Pacific – Stripes “The good news is that both nations, and the U.S. included, have been very good about staying separate and not getting into a case where we are too close or we risk miscalculation,” Carlisle told a group of reporters at the headquarters of Pacific Air Forces in Hawaii. The U.S. is talking to China about the unsafe intercepts, he said. The unsafe encounters have generally been isolated to one place and limited to one Chinese unit, he said. Carlisle said he believes Chinese leaders know this situation and they are addressing the matter. “They have made statements that they want to be safe, they know the cost of miscalculation and the tragedy that could happen,” he said.
New Chinese Catamaran Spy Ship Learns All About Japanese Water | Popular Science The deployment of the 232 suggests that China is making progress in reticifying its longstanding ASW weakness. While the 232 is unlikely to be specifically hunting for foreign submarines, its collection of oceangraphic data like the temperature layers of sea water, local salinity and seabed floors would give Chinese submariners and other ASW practitioners an edge to operate in those East China Sea waters, either by hiding from enemy ASW platforms or to better hunt enemy submarines.
北海舰队司令员邱延鹏任海军参谋长_凤凰资讯
China voices strong discontent over fisherman’s death – Xinhua The fisherman was shot dead by the ROK coastguard Friday morning in a confrontation over alleged illegal fishing in ROK waters. “China is shocked by the violent law-enforcement of the ROK side,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei at a routine press conference.
China, Germany pledge closer political, economic cooperation – Xinhua | China and Germany on Friday laid out a detailed action plan with concrete efforts to forge a closer partnership on the political and economic fronts. The document, a guideline for bilateral cooperation in the medium and long terms, was issued during Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s ongoing official visit to the European economic powerhouse. Calling each other “the most important cooperation partner in their respective regions,” China and Germany agreed to maintain frequent exchanges of high-level visits and close communication through bilateral and multilateral channels.
2014 Annual Report | Congressional-Executive Commission on China pdf
Wesley Clark: To Manage China, Fix America First – NYTimes.com China’s harsh suppression of political dissent, from Hong Kong to Xinjiang, and its close ties to Russia, Iran and North Korea, have finally laid to rest the dream many Western leaders have had since the 1990s: that “constructive engagement” would eventually, inevitably lead to more openness and democracy. Instead, the opposite has occurred: China is more confident, more assertive, and also more closed // agree with much of this, but Wesley Clark didn’t seem to have any issues with China when Rodman & Renshaw, the firm he chaired, was shilling China fraudcaps that cost American investors hundreds of millions or more in losses–ABC News 1.2013
Communist China: Facing up to modern Mao – The Globe and Mail China, moreover, has consistently defied the efforts of Western nations to seek democratic reforms alongside economic opening – repeatedly refuting the perhaps naive belief that the two would, by some inexorable force, emerge together. It’s a sentiment still shared by some members of the business community, but one increasingly out of touch with the reality in China itself. So what is a nation like Canada to do? The first step might be to acknowledge the futility of the idea that China will march toward a more democratic system as its markets open.
‘Putin’s Tiger,’ in a Territory Grab All His Own, Swims to China – NYTimes.com Virile, canny and possessed with a boundless appetite for red meat, Kuzya, a 23-month-old Siberian tiger, would seem the perfect mascot for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who had a personal hand in reintroducing Kuzya to the wild in the Russian Far East in May. It turns out that Kuzya, like Mr. Putin, has territorial ambitions, which this week drew him across the frigid Amur River that separates Russia and China.
Film chronicles the fate of the Uyghurs in Guantánamo Henríquez’s latest film, Uyghurs: Prisoners of the Absurd, chronicles the fascinating and oh-so-disturbing tale of the 22 members of China’s Muslim Uyghur minority who were held at Guantánamo for more than a decade. They were never convicted of any crime and all indications are that they had nothing to do with any terrorist organization. Most were captured in the chaotic months after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, a country they had fled to a few years earlier on the run from persecution in China. The film has its world première at the Festival du nouveau cinema Friday night.
HONG KONG, MACAO AND TAIWAN
Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou calls on Beijing to move toward democracy | South China Morning Post Taiwan’s president on Friday urged China to move toward a more democratic style of development, reiterating his strong support for pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong. Ma Ying-jeou used his speech at Taiwan’s National Day celebrations to discuss the island’s own democratic development in remarks that appeared to show Beijing that Taiwan would never give up its own democracy and rule of law.
国台办:台湾方面不应对香港政改说三道四|香港政改|台湾_
Chinese Espionage Now Rampant in Taiwan | Defense News Taiwan defense sources said that on the Taiwan side, China has collected all the data needed to compromise the Po Sheng C4I upgrade program and the Anyu-4 air defense network upgrade program, Shuan-Ji Plan (electronic warfare technology project), and the Wan Chien (Ten Thousand Swords) joint standoff weapon. A common anecdote used by the Western media suggests China uses a “grains of sand” or “mosaic” approach to collecting intelligence. That is, China collects intelligence from a broad effort by low-level, often amateur, sources to form an overall picture. However, Chinese efforts in Taiwan indicate otherwise.
The “black hands” of Occupy Central – China Media Project “Hostile forces” is a time-honored term in the Chinese Communist Party lexicon. According to research by CMP director Qian Gang (钱钢), the term has its origins in the Soviet Union under Stalin. In China, it first appeared prominently in the People’s Daily in 1948, the same year the newspaper became the official propaganda organ of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. The term “hostile forces,” generally regarded as an indicator of the ideologically hardline — at odds with the spirit of the rule of law — has been on the rise in recent months. We’ll have more to say on that in due course, but for now those interested in reading more in Chinese can turn to Qian Gang’s analysis at Storm Media.
Sandwich Class Confronts Mainlanders Over Hong Kong’s Future – Bloomberg Wilson Wong is manning a barricade in the heart of Hong Kong, letting only emergency vehicles pass, when a purple Bentley drives up and tries to force its way through. As fellow protesters jump in front of the luxury car, two women get out and start yelling at them in Mandarin. Immediately the tension escalates. Most Hong Kongers speak Cantonese. For Wong and his fellow students, Mandarin means mainlanders. Their anger reflects an underlying resentment fueling the city’s two-week-old protest: that the flow of people and wealth from across the border has strained the city’s services and driven the cost of a home out of reach of most.
Jackie Chan is no friend to Hong Kong’s protesters – The Washington Post I found out through the news that Hong Kong’s economic losses reached HK$350 billion [$45 billion] and I’m really worried…I believe every Hong Kong resident loves Hong Kong and wishes it well! Hong Kong’s bright tomorrow requires everyone’s support and hard work…In the song “Country,” one line goes: “There is no prosperous home without a strong country.” I am willing to work hard with everyone and return to rationality, to face the future, love our country, love our Hong Kong.//and his son sits in a Beijing jail
香港“占中”者路上踢球涮火锅引市民愤怒|占中|踢球_凤凰资讯
Snapchat and Spiegel’s Interesting Call on the Hong Kong Demonstrations | TechCrunch “One of my pet peeves over time is how the technology industry has tried to sell counterculture. It’s tried to sell the revolution. We’ve been really resistant to doing this. We didn’t feel like pushing these photos and videos out would turn that attention into action that would be helpful in Hong Kong.”
TECH AND MEDIA
LinkedIn CEO: Learned a Lot by Expanding Into China – Businessweek LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner discusses the company’s expansion into China with Bloomberg’s Betty Liu
Xiaomi announces black 4G Mi4 due on October 28 for China I need to see the context of the comment to reply, but I think that there is an unnecessarily strong spotlight on us. If you make a comment about the chamfer on the Mi 4 on [sic] which is where all the controversy comes from, it’s the same. If you look at the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 has been using the design language that has been around for a while. The iPhone 6 is using design language that HTC has had for 5 years. You cannot claim full ownership of any kind of design languages in our industry.
China’s Baidu buys control of Brazil’s Peixe Urbano in expansion push | Reuters China’s Baidu Inc (BIDU.O), the world’s No. 2 Internet search engine, bought control of Brazilian online-discount company Peixe Urbano for an undisclosed sum, the latest step in a push to expand in Latin America’s largest economy that began more than two years ago.//Meanwhile Baidu’s Brazil search site does not appear to be censoring results for Portuguese and English queries, but it is for Chinese, and not disclosing that to users.
SOCIETY, ART, SPORTS, CULTURE AND HISTORY
Portrait of a Modern Lady – Caixin Style guru and editor of iLook magazine Hong Huang offers straightforward advice on deeply internalized notions of gender, the grit of being an independent woman and democracy in China
整治公款打高尔夫持续升级 央企会籍卡或需冻结-搜狐体育 more bad news for the golf business. Central SOE COFCO called out for using public funds for golf, told to freeze all membership cards in the company, not allowed to spend any more money on them
解读鲁迅：勇猛坚韧的革命战士 Kong Qingdong in latest issue of Red Flag on Lu Xun and how his writings about Chinese society have stood the lest of time… // 中国从鲁迅去世到现在，每一个历史转折时期，
A Fresh Approach: Impressions of Beijing Sun Village | China Development Brief (English) | 中国发展简报 Dong Huijie interviews Mrs. Zhang Shuqin, founder of the Beijing Sun Vilage and explains how the organization has transformed in a social enterprise and become self-sustainable to continue providing services to children of prisoners.
ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE AND HEALTH
China announces breakthrough in zebrafish gene study – Xinhua All 1,333 genes on Chromosome 1 of the zebrafish, which has 85 percent genetic similarity to human beings, have been knocked out by a team of Chinese scientists. The project by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Peking and Tsinghua universities and 38 laboratories nationwide, started in February last year.
科技部：5所大学7名教授套取专项资金 2人已判刑|党风|党组织_凤凰资讯 7 scientists accused of fraudulently taking 25M+ RMB of grant money. 2 have already been sentenced // 中新网10月10日电 据中央纪委监察部网站消息，
AGRICULTURE
Chinese hybrid rice yield hits record: official – Xinhua A team led by Yuan Longping, known in China as “the father of hybrid rice,” has achieved a record for hybrid rice production with an average yield of 1,026.7 kilograms per mu (0.0667 hectare), an official with the Ministry of Agriculture said on Friday.
FOOD AND TRAVEL
搞外卖还是黑社会 饿了么全国多地暴力扫街形同黑社会 CCTV looks at food delivery service ele.me‘s history of beating up the delivery people of rival firms
BOOKS AND LITERATURE
Chinese Writer, Tackling Tiananmen, Wields ‘Power to Offend’ – NYTimes.com Now a prominent novelist and a denizen of Beijing literary circles, Ms. Sheng eventually fashioned that turning point in contemporary Chinese history into a stomach-churning, exuberantly written allegory, “Death Fugue,” which recalls Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” In “Death Fugue,” she tells the truth about how the People’s Liberation Army extinguished the student protest. She also creates a society, Swan Valley, that can be read as China today and in the future, where things seem superficially shiny and sleek, rich and productive.// buy the book on Amazon
BEIJING
北京楼市库存突破9万套创30个月新高 限购或微调_财经频道_一财网 来自亚豪机构统计数据显示，
Sinica Podcast-The Sounds of Old Beijing was on a language program with him in Beijing many years ago // This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are joined by Colin Chinnery from the Beijing Sound History Project, a recording project that aims to preserve the distinctive clangs, songs and shouts of traditional Beijing life. In addition to sampling some recordings from the archives, we also talk about Chinnery’s work with the Shijia Hutong Museum, which recreates life in the narrow hutongs of Old Beijing.
北京空气严重污染已三日 仍未启动红警_政经频道_财新网 Caixin on fact that Beijing air quality alert should be set at red right now but is only at orange, and how the government has never set it at red…because declaring a red alert means all sorts of things get shut, including school,s and additional driving restrictions are triggered // 10月8日、9日、10三天，
Soccer and Cycling Stars Face Grim Pollution in Beijing – NYTimes.com The environmental group Greenpeace used a light projector to flash the words “Blue Sky Now!” on central Beijing’s historic Drum Tower in early morning haze Friday. Zhang Kai, senior climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace East Asia, said the pollution levels in recent days were enough to set off a red alert under an emergency plan issued by Beijing last year, which would have put in motion strict steps such as school closures and banning half of all private cars from roadways on alternate days, based on odd and even license plates.