"Sinocism is the Presidential Daily Brief for China hands"- Evan Osnos, New Yorker Correspondent and National Book Award Winner
Links only today…
- Hospital chiefs in Shenzhen held for graft | SCMP.com
dirty business. and foreign hospital execs have been remarkably adept at avoiding FCPA pitfalls//
Dozens of executives and doctors at four state-run facilities are taken away in probe into commercial bribery – and it appears more will be investigated - Mister Nice Guy Wang Yang shows his steely side | SCMP.com
the real lesson for cadres from Wukan wasn’t that this is a new model in dealing with unrest, it was that you better not let problems grow into something so large and so media-exposed?//
The South China Morning Post (SEHK: 0583, announcements, news) has learned that an order issued in recent months threatened that heads would roll if Guangdong witnessed a second Wukan or similar “unpredicted” mass incident before the 18th party congress. Local government officials and public security officers were told they would be held responsible if they failed to do their utmost to nip protests in the bud.
While it cannot be confirmed that the order came from Wang himself, many find it highly believable.
“This is a critical year for Wang Yang as he is hoping to get into the Politburo Standing Committee, so we’ve been seeing more measures to maintain social stability over the past few months,” said Ye Du, a Guangzhou-based media analyst. “This includes tighter control of the local media and more petitioners being arrested.” - 引领中共党内民主 票选最高层将制度化_多维新闻网
more on leadership polling at top levels of the communist party, institutionalization a big step for intra-party democracy
- Harvard Study–How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression – Google Docs
Interesting, useful study, applies theoretical framework and quantitative methods to something that is pretty obvious to many users of Weibo et al. Not convinced by the section on predictive value of censorship. It may be true, but this paper does not really prove it. more work is needed, as they note
- Chinese Executive Named Nexteer CEO – WSJ.com
Nexteer Automotive, a former General Motors Co. auto-parts unit acquired in 2010 by a Chinese investment group, said on Friday that President and Chief Executive Officer Robert Remenar is leaving the company for a new job, and will be replaced by Guibin Zhao, a senior executive of Nexteer’s Chinese parent.
- How the Obama administration is making the US media its mouthpiece | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Ministry of Propaganda would be proud of such servile media//
Spoonfed national security scoops based on anonymous official leaks – did we learn nothing from Judith Miller’s WMD reporting? - First the ‘targeted killing’ campaign, then the targeted propaganda campaign | Jameel Jaffer and Nathan Wessler | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Officially, the CIA insists its drone war is a state secret, yet we’re now seeing a concerted PR effort to sanitise its dubious legality
- Inside America’s quiet diplomacy on the South China Sea | The Cable
the Obama administration has embarked on a quiet but determined mission behind the scenes to push China and the countries of Southeast Asia to resolve their disputes in the South China Sea.
- Wanted Chinese citizen arrested boarding flight at LAX – latimes.com
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers said Gangyi Zhang, 20, a student at a local university, was apprehended Monday about 10:45 p.m. They said he was an exact match for a warrant issued about four hours earlier by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
- 明鏡新聞網: 明鏡獨家：邱進當選十八大代表，間諜案與他無關
Mirror News claims Qiu Jin has been elected as 18th Party Congress delegate, alleged US spy case has nothing to do with him. as always, consider the source on this:
知情人士告訴明鏡新聞網，說是邱進的秘書當間諜，是張冠李戴，事實是，秘書涉嫌間諜的，是2011年被任命為國安部副部長的陸忠偉。
即將出版的《外參》雜誌還披露，國安部副部長助理間諜案，是在半年前就開始調查，今年元月此人落網。若他是邱進的助理，中央怎麽會安排邱進2月8日去成都帶回王立軍？將陸忠偉說成是邱進，只是某些媒體的誤報迎合了部分人士的願望而已。 - 北京长虹桥发生严重车祸 一辆警车遭大巴碾压_新闻_腾讯网
More pictures of the beijing bus-police car crash
- » Bus Reportedly Kills Police Officer In Beijing After Rolling Over His Car Beijing Cream
horrible crash by Sanlitun, police car (Santana I think, made of balsa wood clearly) folded up like a sandwich, at least one police officer killed, many reports of accident subsequently censored from Sina Weibo. Some say police car was leading the way for a bus load of students who had just finished their Gaokao tests
- Protecting Digital Information in China : The New Yorker
In a (happy} sign of my irrelevance, no message for me//
Kenneth Lieberthal, a China hand at the Brookings Institution, said that he not only leaves his phone and laptop at home, but also turns off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, uses a loaner phone, and takes the battery out for meetings. He connects to the Internet “only through an encrypted, password-protected channel, and copies and pastes his password from a USB thumb drive. He never types in a password directly” because of key-logging software.For people with clearances, that only makes sense. For the rest of us, you might do well with Jeffrey Carr’s article “Cyber Self Defense for Non Geeks.” For starters, update your browser, watch those attachments, and change your password. - In Ecuador, home truths for China: local opposition to EcuaCorriente’s Mirador mining project points to challenges for Chinese companies overseas | chinadialogue
Hostility to an open-pit mining project points to the strife facing Chinese companies abroad. Huang Hongxiang headed for South America to investigate the clash between investors, NGOs and locals.
- Sinica Podcast-Morally Adrift?
How can China reverse the decline in civic consciousness? Does the answer lie in Confucianism? Buddhism? Christianity? Secular public school education? Good Samaritan laws?
- China’s Refiners Face Biggest Fuel-Price Cut Since 2008 – Bloomberg
China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (600028) and PetroChina Co. (857), the nation’s biggest refiners, face more losses from processing crude after the government cut fuel prices by the most since 2008 as global crude costs tumbled.
State-controlled retail gasoline prices fall by 530 yuan ($83) a metric ton and diesel by 510 yuan starting today, the National Development and Reform Commission, the nation’s top economic planner, said on its website yesterday. The cut is the steepest since the government’s current pricing system was introduced in December 2008. - Authoritarian Rulers Get Subtler: Putin, Chavez, China’s Chiefs – WSJ.com
heard Dobson got a 500k advance for his book?//
Forget clumsy commissars and caudillos. Savvy strongmen now invoke democracy and intimidate quietly..I asked one Chinese official if there was anything that the party saw in Tunis, Cairo or Benghazi that could be a cause for alarm. Yes, he replied. The party had survived its Tiananmen moment, but few think that it can survive another. “If they let that many people go to a public square again,” he said, “they will have already lost.”
For modern-day dictators, the challenge isn’t having enough guns to mow down their people in the streets. It’s finding a way to keep them from ever learning how to march. - IMF Shifts Policy on Yuan – WSJ.com
The International Monetary Fund, in a shift of policy, said it now considers the Chinese yuan only “moderately undervalued,” which could present political problems for the U.S. in its effort to press China to boost the value of its currency…On Friday, IMF Deputy Managing Director David Lipton—a former Obama administration economic official—said the IMF had formally changed its view because China’s current-account surplus had declined sharply and the yuan has appreciated.
- Military diplomacy: Not so warm and fuzzy | The Economist
- Complaints force LGBT center out–global times
Beijing LGBT Center is facing eviction from a local community after the property management company received complaints from its neighbors.
- New Account of Bo Xilai Meeting With Wang Lijun – NYTimes.com
That story was told to friends by Yu Junshi, a shadowy fixer in Mr. Bo’s inner court. Mr. Yu worked in the 1990s as an overseas intelligence agent and owned two dogs that bit a man to death in Chongqing last July
- Northern Girls: interview with author Sheng Keyi | Danwei
Not on Amazon yet//Qian Xiaohong is a young woman from a village in Hunan who went to the boomtown of Shenzhen in the 1990s in search of work. She is bold and optimistic, if sometimes a little naïve, and has short black hair with just a hint of curl. She has the round-faced look of a peasant girl from a propaganda poster, but for her most defining feature: her breasts. Full and beautiful, they are much too large for polite society.Qian Xiaohong is the protagonist of Northern Girls, a novel by Sheng Keyi (盛可以) published last week in English translation (the original Chinese book was titled Bei Mei 北妹). The novel draws on Sheng Keyi’s personal experience: she too left rural Hunan to seek her fortune in Shenzhen.
- In China, Expats Find Job Opportunities Are Scant – Businessweek
What advice would Lurie give recent college grads considering a move to China for work? “Don’t,” he says. “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t.”
- 长沙将建838米世界第一高楼 模块化建设仅需7个月年底竣工-财经网
Changsha building 838m tall tower, using prefab materials, says will be done in 7 months. Too bad more a clone of Dubai’s tallst twoer than a unique Hunan design, say a red, flaming hot pepper-shaped building
- China says Great Wall extended to ancient Korea-INSIDE Korea JoongAng Daily
Some local scholars said the Korean government will probably end up expressing “regret” about China’s claim, as it previously did.
“China is repeating its Northeast History Project based on the premise that all history that happened in the current Chinese territory is all its own,” said Lee Seong-je, a researcher at the Seoul-based Northeast Asian History Foundation. - China’s Ship Yards Fail to Win Orders as Greek Owners Shun Loans – Bloomberg
time to up PLAN ship construction?//
Chinese ship yards are failing to find new work 20 months after Premier Wen Jiabao sought to encourage ordering by pledging $5 billion of loans to Greek vessel owners, who control the world’s biggest merchant fleet.
Digest powered by RSS Digest