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2005-05-17T16:36:00.000+02:00

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Kafka in Shanghai

2005-05-15T13:21:00.000+02:00

Here is a story Kafka would have liked:
A guy composes a text called "A detailed instruction on the Protest Against Right Wing Japanese" (with some quite humorous parts), sends it to some colleagues, and goes on with his work. The message spreads via e-mail and SMS. The following weekend a lot of people come together to protest against Japans handling of history in their schoolbooks. Some weeks later the same guy, Tang Ye is sentenced to 5 years of prison. Where is Kafka, you ask, just a normal thing to happen in China.
T-Salon has the answer:

It turned out that the instructions Tang wrote were intended for circulation internally at his workplace only. But someone from his company posted it to the world wide web without omitting Tang's name and contact information. Once the word was out, the message was unstoppable. By noon time, it was wide-spread. Mr. Tong, a white-collar worker in Shanghai, landed a five year jail term for what he wrote.

Its quite hard to believe this, but if its true this is a really sad story.
There also is a reaction in the netsphere:

The author of the above email also urged people to, from now on until May 16th, put a yellow ribbon on trees in Shanghai's People Square, "to express our best wishes" for Tang Ye. He asked people to forward the email.

More Info and Tang's whole message you can find at T-Salon.

Desertification and the cashmere goats

2005-05-11T19:26:00.000+02:00

a cashmere goat nibbled of by its fellow herd members, photo by Lu Tongjing

Last week I heared a speech about desertification in China at the Heinrich Böll Foundation (foundation of Germany's green party). It was given by Lu Tongjing, a photographer and grassroots environmental activist. In recent years he traveled northwest China and his pictures give testimony about the desertification that takes place there. There are several causes, of which one is the breeding of cashmere goats. They seem to have an insatiable appetite and even start eating their neighbor's fur when there is no grass left (see picture above). From the website of the China Environment and Sustainable Development Reference and Research Centre (CESDRRC)

The root of this unfortunate situation stems back to 1982, when Japanese investors initiated a cashmere project in the Alashan region. According to the Environmental Bureau of Inner Mongolia, Alashan itself has traditionally not been an area of goat

a cashmere jumper!breeding, and it has been estimated that, in order to allow for sustainable animal husbandry, no more than 200,000 animals should be kept in the region, while at present, there are some 1.6 million (80% of which are goats). In 2001, there were some 2600 cashmere processing plants in China, paying goat owners up to 300 RMB (36 USD) per kg of cashmere wool. A cashmere jumper of high quality can fetch up to 1000 US Dollar a piece on the world market. As a result, the sensitive ecosystem of these arid regions is destroyed by keeping too many goats.

So next time think twice when you are about to buy a new cashmere jumper!

Halo Scan Error

2005-05-08T11:32:00.000+02:00

Does anybody know what's wrong with Halo Scan? Doesn't work anymore since a few days.

And Blogger seems to have problems too, since I can't edit my posts correctly.

Anybody any idea?

Self-Criticism 21. century style

2005-05-04T18:10:00.000+02:00

What troubles teachers at schools and universitys all over the world now also becomes a problem for the CCP: The cut and cast option starts to become a popular tool among CCP members, when they are asked to write their ritual self-criticism, TIME ASIA reports:

... "But the exercise isn't taken as seriously as it was during the Cultural Revolution, when self-criticisms could involve public humiliation or worse; these days, some cadres are finding it easier to download sample texts from websites like dangyuan.cn and submit them as their own. A few excerpts:

"Sometimes when I watch TV or read newspapers and magazines, I see corruption stories and I am really angry. But afterward, all the passion and rage drain out of me and I don't have the appropriate feeling of pain in my body. I totally forget that I myself am a Communist Party member."
—For a government official

"Although I care about international and domestic affairs and actively participate in Communist Party activities, I study other things in a passive way. In my leisure time ... I rarely study Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory and the Three Represents."
—For a student

"Given our emphasis on putting people first, I found it more practical to be humane, give my staff more benefits, increase their incomes and to solve their problems such as housing, employment, schooling, health and social insurance instead of merely talking about the usefulness of Communism."
—For a media official" ...

Another schoolbook issue

2005-05-03T11:49:00.000+02:00

Expressindia reports about the confusion of some Japanese legislators about Anti-Japanese sentiment in China. Why do they hate us, is the question. Now the Japanese embassy has collected several Chinese schoolbooks and is not happy with what they found:

... "Chinese high school students learn that "a crisis in the world capitalist economy" sparked the invasion of northeast China in 1931. Japan used the northern China economy and local workforce as "service for the invading Japanese."
No Chinese text mentions Japan's post-war changes, such as its constitution, adopted in 1947, that renounced war and its democratization process that led to a free press and free assembly. There is no mention of Japan's official development aid to China or any other Japanese efforts to help post-war Asia." ...

Via CDT

Protests, what protests?

2005-04-28T12:22:00.000+02:00

While the Anti-Japanese protests attracted huge attention in mainstream media and the blogsphere, other protests by students held in March run unnoticed.

Ethical corporation reports:

... "The announcement comes as a mass student protest in China stage a Day of Action in six cities to call on the company to cease their "destructive logging practices", according to a statement." ...

... "The students will be boycotting APP products and will be asking companies to follow. Protestors took up positions in front of supermarket shelves featuring APP products in Beijing, Hefei, Nanning, Lanzhou, Harbin and Chengdu. Passing shoppers were told of the company's forestry operations in Yunnan and elsewhere." ...

Background is, a report by Greenpeace-China on the illegal loggings committed in Yunnan by the Singapore-based logging giant APP. Some months later the State Forestry Administration has taken official action:

... ""The investigation is not finished yet, but we have indeed spotted illegal logging in an APP project after initial investigation. We believe that both APP and local governments are responsible for the violation," Wang Zhuxiong, a senior SFA official told the official newsagency Xinhua.

The news comes in the wake of a damning report by Greenpeace on the company's tree felling practices in Yunnan, which was released last November. The environmental group claims that APP sequestered a 1.8 million acre plot in, intensively clear-felled it and replaced it with plantation crops." ...

I don't know if the protests really where "mass student protests", but such news showing a growing concern about environmental protection, an emerging civil society and the cooperation of environmental NGOÕs and the gobernment too easily stay unnoticed, leading to an incomplete picture of China.

Some more Links on the topic:

green-web.org (Chinese)

greenpeace (Chinese)

163.com (Chinese)

Xinhua (English)

NGO with Chinese characteristics

2005-04-28T12:15:00.000+02:00

A new environmental NGO has been launched recently, Ethical Corporation reports (via CDT). Though de jure a NGO, the All China Environment Federation (ACEF) looks more like a branch of SEPA, the State environmental Protection, as its ties to this organization are more than close:

... "Government news organizations insist on calling ACEF a non-government organization. This is a curious position, as it is clearly a government-affiliated body. ACEF has significant numbers of ex-officials and party apparatchiks among its members and has received major government backing and funding, which is unheard of for a non-official "NGO" in China." ...

Li Hengyuan, ACEF's founding vice-secretary-general, for example is the former Director General, Policy and Law Department, SEPA (if my information on that is correct. Would be thankful for any further information or correction, i.e. couldn't find the ACEF website due to my poor Chinese).

The article concludes that as the number and the activities of green NGO's increased heavily, and the relationship between government and these organizations became closer,

... "These relationships, forged over recent years, may yet be superseded by ACEF - where the government may feel it has more of a controlling influence." ...

Promoting Chinese-Japanese dialogue

2005-04-23T17:55:00.000+02:00

The great Global Voices Online is trying to promote Chinese-Japanese dialogue by suggesting the tag cn_jp_dialog for all posts on that topic. More on tags and how to use them see in their post on this.

Evironmental pollution and social unrest

2005-04-22T16:29:00.000+02:00

Uncontrolled waste water from Changlin paper mill, in Dongxiang County, Jiangxi

The recent riots in Huankantou in Zhejiang province have highlighted one of the most urgent problems in China today: Environmental pollution and the powerlessness of the local people when the regional authorities don't see a call for action due to financial interests.

Xinhua had sad pictures of severe pollution in March (via CDT).

According to numbers given by Murray Scott Tanner in a testimony presented to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, protests increased by no less than 9% per year:

... "The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) reports that the number of "mass incidents" (e.g. various forms of protest) has skyrocketed from about 8,700 in 1993, to 32,000 in 1999, to about 50,000 in 2002, and surpassing 58,000 in 2003 (See table in Appendix). Especially noteworthy has been the steady rate of increase: protest incidents have apparently increased every year since 1993 (although 2001 data are unavailable), and in no year did they increase by less than 9 percent." ...

Although not every protest is about environmental pollution I would suggest, that also the number of protests out of that motivation, will increase.

Meanwhile there are encouraging signals from the State Environmental Protection Administration, as it more and more supports Chinese NGOs who have environmental protection on their agenda.

How racist is China?

2005-04-19T13:50:00.000+02:00

I once was asked by a Chinese friend, if I think that there exists racism in China and she was quite stunned about my answer that, yes, I think their exists racism in China. The recent demonstrations and a commentary at China Herald caused me to think about the topic again. J. Zhang wrote:

"I do not agree with your labelling of these events as racist. Also Chinese people are not racist, however, if you have been in Japan, you would learn what racism really is"

As Fons of China Herald also answered, it is quite difficult to call it other than racist if a whole people are labeled pigs.

I sometimes have the impression, that people whose countries suffered under western (and nonwestern aka Japanese) imperialism and racism think they are immune to it. The above statement that Chinese are no racists, from my experience, is quite representative for Chinese and it reflects that a lot of Chinese don't consider it to be a problem in their country, are not aware that such a thing could exist in China or don't have an idea what racism really is about.

A recent article in The Guardian has some numbers on racist comments in Internet forums about Condoleecca Rice after her visit in China:

... "He says that of 800 messages he has read about her visit, no less than 70 involved racist comments about her colour: of these, only two were relatively moderate; the rest were vicious, describing Rice as a "black ghost", "black dog", "black woman" and "black bitch". One stated, "You are not even like a black ghost, a really low form of life," and another, "Her brain is even more black than her skin." One writer said: "I don't support racism, but this black ghost really makes people angry, the appearance of a little black who has made good." ...

Actually the research was done by Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese who according to the article strongly opposed statements like those above in an article on the New Century Net website. Encouraging that at least some are aware of the problem.

The numbers are quite interesting, cause they match polls recently done in Europe, which reveal, that an average of 10% of Europeans have racist and anti-Semitic opinions. So China could be considered a rather "normal" country in that concern.

From my viewpoint the main question is not if there exists racism in a country – every human society has the potential for it, and in most societies it exists -, but how a society deals with it. That's a future challenge for Chinese and the Chinese government.

NGO fights for Chinas cultural heritage. Art buisness and politics

2005-04-14T18:45:00.000+02:00

Hard times to come for museums worldwide as a Chinese NGO, the China Cultural Relics Recovery Program, funded by the China Foundation for the Development of Folklore Culture (wonder how non-governmental it actually is) is on its way to reclaim Chinese cultural relics, Xinhua reports:

... "The group said it would mainly look for stolen, excavated or looted items between 1840 and 1949. ...
... "The spiritual wealth can be shared (by the whole world), but not the ownership, just like the property rights on software," said Xie Chensheng, a senior cultural heritage preservation expert.
"Ownership of the scattered cultural treasures should belong to Chinese people," he said.
Director general of the program Wang Weiming said the program was a civil movement sponsored by Chinese NGOs and backed by public opinion, historical realities and an international convention to protect cultural relics at their original sites." ...

Wow, lot of homework to do for these guys, as it is estimated, that about a million Chinese treasures are kept in more than 200 museums in 47 countries.

Another recent article (last but one article on the page) concerning Chinese fine arts is about the public hearing of the US Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) on the request of the People's Republic of China for US Customs restrictions against the import of all Chinese cultural property over 95 years old. That in fact would be an Art-Embargo and is a nightmare scenario for the whole US Asian-art-business. Some doubt that the whole thing is about protecting the cultural heritage of china and bring up more political motives:

"Marc Wilson was the only presenter willing to bring up the unspoken politics many suspect is behind all this: the growing conflict between national and provincial/local officials in China. A New York-based Chinese collector agreed with this position, reporting that the new head of the Cultural Relics Bureau is `trying to make his mark' and `deflect criticism from internal piracy'. `The fact is, construction and development are more destructive than looters,' said Wilson. And `government engagement in art trade' is `ambiguous' at best."

The quest for historical truth

2005-04-13T19:14:00.000+02:00

ESWN has two great posts about the conflict about history between China and Japan. First one is about the strategy of the Japanese rightists. He compares them with the one the Creationists (another link) and promoters of Intelligent Design (ID) in the USA use to attack evolution theory:

"If historical revisionism has always been around, then why is there an apparent rise in anti-Japanese sentiments among the Chinese today. That is because the Japanese ultra-rightists have finally figured out a way to push their agenda through. If they used to be an embarrassing bunch of kooks thirty or forty years ago, they are now using the contemporary art of issue-based triangulation to their advantage. If they needed a casebook paradigm to follow, they only have to look at the teaching of Intelligent Design (ID) in American schools as a 'scientific' theory on the same basis as Darwinian evolution."

A lot of broadcasts about the recent Anti-Japan demonstrations in China mentioned, that the schoolbooks the whole hubbub is about are only used in a small number of schools. His response:

"It is true that the textbook offered by Japan's Society for History Textbook Reform in 2001 was adopted by only 0.39% of the schools, and the 2005 edition will probably not do very well either. But just look at what is happening to the other books! And how far will the books move the next time? They disappeared the Unit 731 bacterial weapons division in 2001; in 2005, they disappeared the "comfort women" too; what next? How long before every history book in Japan say that the whole war was about liberating the "Asian nations from the western imperialists"? If you believe that this is a non-issue due to the low adoption rate of one textbook, then you are quite wrong about the real intent and the practical results."

In the second one he has some excerpts of an article by Liu Xiaobo dealing with the selective view of the Chinese Communists on history:

... "When it comes to viewpoints about warfare and nationalism, the Chinese people are not better than the Japanese. "The winner becomes the emperor while the loser is just a bandit" is an age-old concept of warfare in China. The arrogance of the Han tribe about owning everything under heaven continues to live on today as nationalism. More particularly, the way in which the Chinese Communists have fabricated history and used lies to rule since seizing power is much worse than how the Japanese rightists are revising their history of invasion; the way in which the Chinese Communists have beautify their totalitarian rule is much worse than how the Japanese rightists have beautify militarism. The way by which the Chinese Communists have ruled with lies has created a basis by which Japan can revise its history in order to fool the new generation of Japanese." ...

The Standard also has an article about the Communists view on history.

First Contact - Chinese Cars for the first time on European streets in autumn

2005-04-11T14:42:00.000+02:00

In autumn, Euro Cars will start selling the first Chinese car ever sold in Europe. The company will import the limousine Zhonghua of Chinese carmaker Jinbei Automotive and have it for sale in roundly 1000 shops around Europe, china.org.cn reports (via CITN)

Laogai becomes german word?

2005-04-09T14:45:00.000+02:00

Chinablätter pointed to this today:

The Laogai Research Foundation (LRF) is pleased to announce the addition of the word "laogai" into the renowned German dictionary Duden Die deutsche Rechtschreibung 2004 (23rd edition). In 2003, the word "laogai" was also added into the Oxford English Dictionary. LRF hopes that as awareness about the laogai system in China continues to increase, pressure will grow for the system to be abolished.

Maybe someone sometime used the term laogai somewhere, but I never found it in a german newspaper till now and I duobt that it will become a common one. Mostly journalists write "the chinese gulags" when they reffer to the laogais.

As Many Wars As Nations

2005-04-07T19:23:00.000+02:00

Found a very interesting essay by Adam Krzeminski (according to the publisher, one of Poland's leading journalists and chairman of the Polish-German Association in Warsaw), entitled "As many wars as nations". The introduction by the publisher says:

"The Second World War is still being fought. Sixty years after it ended, almost every anniversary stirs up arguments and emotions: D-Day, the Warsaw Uprising, the liberation of Auschwitz, the bombing of Dresden, Yalta, the taking of Berlin, and Potsdam. There can be no single version of this war. When the heads of state stand side by side at the ceremony in Moscow on May 9, each of them will be remembering something different."

Well, the second world war is still being fought in Asia too when one thinks of the nationalistic uproar in China these days, and the euphemistic description and presentation of the Japanese attack on China and the rest of Asia in Japanese schoolbooks.

The essay closes:

"... Europeans will go on living with competing memories and competing myths for a long time to come. What is new is that these competing myths are no longer being fostered in confinement, but in constant dialogue between neighbors, besides which in each country as well as being fostered they are also being debunked. Time will tell if this clash of national myths will ultimately engender a common European view of the Second World War, without dropping the national experiences. Already in many countries the Europeans are gradually ceasing to be victims of autism exclusively fixated on separate images of the past."

Looks as if historical autism will not cease in Asia for some time, as there is no sign that either side is willing to make a step towards a constructive dialogue.

P.S. Particular interesting is one of the links coming with the article: "Myths of the Nations".

Grassroots Growing In China

2005-04-07T12:51:00.000+02:00

I wrote about the big plans Pan Yue, deputy environment minister has some time ago, and was quite skeptical if his institution (the State Environmental Protection Administration) really has the power to stand up against those who see economic growth as the only criteria of success and the powerful local administrations. Now I found an interesting article by Elizabeth C. Economy author of "The River Runs Black", in which she describes the growing environmental grassroots movement and its close ties with the SEPA:

Environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are at the forefront of strengthening civil society in China, drawing hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens into environmental activities, forging non-state linkages across provincial boundaries, and establishing the Chinese people as political actors independent of state-directed policies. Environmental NGOs also play a critical role in advancing transparency, rule of law, and official accountability within the Chinese political system. Through this process, they have become a significant force for political reform. ...

... Still, SEPA support for NGOs is very strong. It is common now for high-ranking SEPA officials, such as Pan Yue, to articulate the necessity of environmental NGOs for safeguarding the environment. Pan has also said that within the next two years, SEPA will help to establish an NGO cooperation network and to provide professional training for small grassroots groups. He believes that it is critical to have the Chinese people engaged in environmental protection and to open the decision-making process for environmental issues to make it democratic. ...

Would be interesting to hear more about these guys in the mainstream media. Shows that the Chinese government is not an as monolithic block as which it appears in most of western media.

JAPAN IN DESPERAT NEED OF NEW PR-POLICY - UPDATE

2005-04-04T12:21:00.001+02:00

Reuters reported (via China Digital News):

Protesters smashed a local Japanese supermarket's windows after a demonstration in China against Japan's bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council turned violent, Kyodo news agency reported Sunday.

Protesters in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, in southwest China broke the windows of Japanese-owned supermarket Ito-Yokado on Saturday, Kyodo said.

Pictures of the Chengdu incident here: Drunk Dream and aqidesign

Death penalty

2005-04-04T11:53:00.000+02:00

One example why death penalty never is a good choice (by China Daily):

'Murdered' wife lives, proves husband's innocence

After serving 11 years in prison for the murder of his wife, a "criminal" has been proved innocent following the appearance of his spouse with her second husband and son. ..........
.......... The local court sentenced She to death in 1994, but the provincial court did not approve that until the year after. In 1998, the ruling was changed to 15 years imprisonment for "intentional murder."

PIMP MY NEWS

2005-04-03T12:22:00.000+02:00

News from Hunan University, where "Political Correctness" seems not to be a common term to some (via ESWN):

On March 17, 2005, Hunan Normal University began to offer a class on how to sensationalize news (新闻炒作学). After two sessions, this course has now been suspended due to the public outcry.

Looks as if this teacher took the famous Deng Xiaoping slogan "Seek the truth from the facts" too literal. Just have to love this guy for his bluntness.

JAPAN IN DESPERATE NEED OF NEW PR-POLICY

2005-03-29T13:33:00.000+02:00

Seems its high time for the Japanese government to fire their PR-guys and get new ones, if they really want to join the UN security-council. Or perhaps just rethink its relation to history. Danwei wrote:

A worldwide Chinese petition against Japan getting a seat on the UN Security Council has collected 16 million names in its first week. The original aim was 20 million by August. Names are collected via SMS and on the China918 website.

ESWN had interesting posts about the age-old schoolbook issue, that heats emotions in east Asia ritually every four years. The Spiegel wrote about the growing tension between China and Japan and Japans increasing isolation in East Asia earlier:

Premier Koizumi's regular visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine, which commemorates Japan's war dead, are invariably seen as provocations by Japan's neighbors. The monument also honors Japan's leading war criminals, executed in 1948, as Shinto deities. In protest against such visits, China's President Hu Jintao is stubbornly refusing to meet with Koizumi either in Beijing or Tokyo.

The two Asian leaders would have a lot to talk about -- the nuclear program of North Korea's Stalinist dictator Kim Jong Il would, for example, be high on the list. Instead, China and Japan continue to eye each other suspiciously across the straits. Each antagonizing the other and neither willing to budge.

Everybody who is interested in how China and Japan dealt with the war crimes (especially the Nanjing Massacre) in their history books, read this:

Joshua A. Fogel (Ed.),The Nanjing Massacre. In History and Historiography, 2000.

Virtual Diamond Sutra

2005-03-27T22:23:00.000+02:00

For all of you who are interested in chinese history. British library has a virtual copy of the Diamond Sutra, the world' earliest, dated, printed book online.

Chinese media Janus, Li Xiguang

2005-03-27T14:14:00.000+02:00

More news from notorious Prof. Li Xiguang, Chinas Media expert Nr. 1 (wrote about him earlier). China Herald has a post on him, inspired by ESWN. According to the sources they cite Prof. Li seems to be quite flexible in his opinion towards freedom of speech depending to whom he speaks, taking a strong stand for press freedom when he talks to foreign media and same time calling on the own government to tighten the control of the internet. ESWN has a link to an interview with him, where he states:

The most important task is social justice. Only based on social justice, can people be united together. We should insist on humanism spirit, which was also an important part of our tradition. We can reconstruct the value system of Chinese people with the help of our tradition. We should find the common ground of Chinese peoples belief.

Though this sounds quite reasonable I doubt that Prof. Li's definition of "humanism spirit" is the same as that of most western readers.
Also I wonder what kind of "value system" he has in mind, remembering a statement in a BBC interview. There he said, analyzing the problem of corruption, that in past times people had fear, due to Confucianism, Buddhism, or communism. Today their god is money and they have no fear.
Now, for me this sounds like the parole for an authoritarian sytem. Just frighten people enough and they won't do bad things.

German Humor

2005-03-26T12:21:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I had to discover, that the bad reputation, German humor has, even made it all the way to china (at china heralds comment section bingfeng wrote:
never expect a german people so hurmous).

Admittedly the topic is a difficult one and even experts sometimes have problems to distiguish truth from untruth. Some say there never existed something like German humor, and the whole thing about it was made up by the British to get rid of their own bad jokes. Others say, citing roman sources about the barbaric habit of joke orgies in German villages, there existed something like it once, but that it has been lost long ago. An American friend of mine once bumped into a German joke in a back alley in Mexico City and had a really good time with it. Unfortunately he couldn't remember how to get back there next day.

Misunderstandings about German humor might also result from the German language itself, as popularity ratings show it in a close race with ancient Greek, winner not decided yet.

Germans on the other hand become more and more popular all over the world. There even is a whole new service industry developing around them. Don't believe me? Check this out: Rent A German

春天来了

2005-03-25T00:18:00.000+01:00

Spring has come to berlin!
Yippie!!

Beijing scores own goal

2005-03-24T14:02:00.000+01:00

PLA Propaganda Poster

Looks as if the Chinese anti-secession law causes European politicians to rethink the lift of the arms-embargo towards china. Strange thing is, that the majority of Chinese, leaders as well as normal people, don't seem to understand what the whole fuss is made about. A commentary in the GUANGMING RIBAO says, those European politicians are shortsighted, accuses them to treat china with bias, and talks of the arms embargo as a discrimination (link by chinablätter). Also Chinese I know found it odd, that so many of their German friends told them they think the law is a bad thing.

Well as there are a lot of reasons for the European reaction for sure, one major point (particularly for normal people) might be the two world wars, and that many Europeans and especially Germans have realized that two reasons for them were nationalism and chauvinism. So Europeans today are quite sensitive towards nationalistic tones like the ones recently aired in Beijing (but also towards those that have been aired in Washington for some time). Also the affirmation the whole thing will appease the Taiwan straights, and nobody wants to buy weapons in a large scale, is not that convincing.

The SPIEGEL wrote about the lift of the arms embargo to be the next major threat to trans-Atlantic relations some time ago. Perhaps the anti-secession law prevented a new crisis between Europe and America. Another interpretation might be, that it is just a good excuse for European leaders, preventing them from loosing face, as they already were convinced by the

Americans, the NYT points out. I anyway wondered for some time how German chancellor Schröder wanted to convince the Green party to accept the lift of the arms embargo, cause it triggers two neuralgic points in the green worldview: selling arms and human rights.

Congratulations

2005-03-23T11:08:00.000+01:00

Seems childhood is over for this blog, as it had its first date (comment) yesterday. All good wishes from my side.

Zedong's children seek their fortune

2005-03-22T10:37:00.000+01:00

I'm sometimes puzzled how western journalists who seem to feel the urgent need to write something about china still mix up the easiest things; names are the most common example. Is it so hard to notice that Chinese put the family name first, like everybody knows it from Mao Zedong? Will Hutton of The Guardian Unlimited has a problem with history in his article "Mao's children seek their fortune":

After the sack of Nanjing in 1841, then imperial capital of China, the British secured what the Chinese still call the unequal treaty; Britain won control of Hong Kong and the right to trade freely in opium; the Chinese got nothing. And it was at Nanjing in 1937 that the Chinese were again and more bloodily humiliated by foreigners. The Japanese murdered an estimated 300,000 civilians and soldiers in an atrocity whose calculated, indifferent cruelty rivalled a Nazi death camp, but to which the world has been curiously indifferent.

Unfortunately capital of China in 1841 was Beijing and that already for some time. If the most simple historical facts aren't accurate I wonder how far I can trust his analyses (article is about the challenges Chinese economy is facing)?

Footnote:

Mentioning the Nanjing-Massacre and the Nazis leads me to the history of John Rabe (aka "the good man of Nanjing") a Nazi who along with some twenty other foreigners rescued many Chinese when the Japanese attacked Nanjing in 1937. He is an example of how paradox and absurd history and humans can be sometimes. Been committed to an inhuman and criminal regime on the one side and opposing inhuman and criminal acts on the other side doesn't go along with normal black and white schemata of good and evil. Perhaps he is an example of how patriotism can make people blind towards their own nations crimes.

Sauna Art in Berlin. Xu Tan's "Air is good"

2005-03-20T12:49:00.000+01:00

Friday evening it was culture-time for me. I went to the opening of the exhibition "Air is good" of Chinese artist Xu Tan (Link, Link) in Berlins daadgalerie. Actually, exhibition is not the right word as there is only an installation. What you see are two videos of interviews with Germans and Chinese, talking about their views how the two societies changed in the last 15 years and in the middle of the room you have a glass-sauna. Everybody is welcomed to sauna in public – bathrobes and towels are provided and there even is a shower. The sauna is supposed to symbolizes the growing wealth of china, which absorbs critical thought.

I'm not that big into modern art and mostly I find the explanation that is given with it quite constructed, so I wasn't that impressed; maybe also due to the fact, that on such opening-events the talk and the free wine mostly are more important than the art itself. It was a nice event anyway and there were also people enjoying themselves having a sauna.

Seems that I become a culture-maniac, cause today once again is exhibition-time. I will have a look at "About Beauty", wrote about it earlier.

"True Beauty for us is Wealth"

2005-03-17T14:14:00.000+01:00

At Berlins Haus der Kulturen der Welt (house of the cultures of the world) an event called "About Beauty", which focuses on concepts of beauty, with particular emphasis on China, will take place soon.

Chinese Choreographer Jin Xing also participates and is quoted in an article in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung (abstract of the article in English at signandsight):

"Chinese bodies look weak in comparison with beautiful African bodies. And the Chinese don't have the overriding sense of envy and justice that makes the bodies hard and the people rich in the West. But the concept of spending money in a fitness studio is still utterly alien in China. The Chinese work hard because true beauty for us is wealth."

Now that is a statement and a nice bunch of stereotypes too. Didn't know that the wealth of the West is built on a sense of envy and justice. Wonder if she is aware of the fact, that she confirms the prejudices some people in Southeast Asia have about Chinese being only interested in money. Also I would say that at least some Shanghaiers are working hard because they want a membership in a fitness studio.

About Signandsight:
signandsight.com is the English version of the German online cultural magazine Perlentaucher.
signandsight.com provides a lively and informative view of cultural and intellectual life in Germany. In Today's Feuilletons, which appears every day (Monday-Friday) at 11am, summarizes the highlights of the cultural pages of the major German language newspapers. Where possible, we link to the articles themselves.In the Features section, we publish a selection of especially interesting articles in English translation: two or three a week. The Features are saved in an archive, sorted according to both date and topic.

Wen Jiabao censored

2005-03-17T11:53:00.000+01:00

About the news in the NYT, that what Wen Jiabao said at a press conference did not match with what was reported by Chinese media, Fons of China Herald wrote:

Maybe I'm too long here but I could not find it that surprising. I had almost ten years ago a talk with a Xinhua reporter who was covering the diplomatic beat and he was very open on how the systems works. "Even our highest leaders can make mistakes when they talk to foreign guests, even when they read a prepared speech," he said. "Mostly such a mistake is already corrected by the translators and since most of the foreign guests do no speak Chinese, they will not notice the difference. When also the translators do not notice the mistake, the media will bring a correct editions of what our leader should have said."

So you foreign correspondents, next time you go to a press conference take your own translator with you. Funny imagination, a room full of journalists, each one with his own translator whispering in his ear.
Wonder how many different versions of the press conference that would produce?

Green GDP wishful thinking?

2005-03-17T00:55:00.000+01:00

When I watched BBC’s Talking Point on Sunday (13.5.05) Xiong Lei, Director of the Chinese News Agency, asked about environmental pollution, mentioned the “tempest” of environmental protection, that started end of last year, and the green GDP. Today the Asian Times has an article about the topic:

State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) Vice President Pan Yue told a press conference on February 28 that SEPA and the National Bureau of Statistics would enforce a pilot green GDP accounting system in 10 provinces and municipalities in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei. This would mark China's first step to evaluate the tremendous cost of environmental pollution in the course of its breathtaking economic progress.

and later

Recently, it was reported that the green GDP indicator could be listed as a yardstick to measure the performance of officials and party cadres in 2007.

That would in fact be a big advantage, but it seems that not everybody is pleased with these plans, or at least skeptical about it:

National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) spokesman Zheng Jingping admitted, "as for the green GDP project, the concept is good but the practice will be difficult". He acknowledged that "the idea of green GDP indicates that the social awareness of environmental protection and resource conservation has been awakened", but warned that "the public has pinned too much expectation on the system".

and

Skeptics already smell a subtle divergence between the SEPA and the NBS over the effects of the new accounting system.

I’m also quite skeptical if these plans will work, even if they have backing from the top of the government. Money has a big seductive power, and with environmental protection mostly you don’t make money. There are a lot of people who have financial interests in opposing the introduction of the Green GDP, and those who suffer under the pollution have no voice. Also the power of the central government isn’t that big on local level, and the decisions, that lead to the severe state in which the environment of China is, are made at provincial and regional level, as the article also mentions.
So it doesn’t look that good for the Chinese Greens, but good luck to them anyway and lets hope for the best.

Has the BBC been cheated?

2005-03-15T12:49:00.000+01:00

China Herald wrote:
Last week was a China week for the BBC and the famous discussion program "Question Time" in what was supposed to be an independent audience, that could participate in the discussion. Doubts is rising whether the audience was really that independent. "The translators of our mayor have been making overtime," jokes one of my well-connected friends, who saw the tape. "There were many familiar faces in the audience. I think the BBC has been cheated."

Rather interesting discussion anyway. For all who did not see it the link here .
If you want to see a handpicked audience watch Talking Point with Lei Xiong, Director of the Chinese News Agency, Professor Xiguang Li, and some media students with really though questions. I especially like the Professor, who seems not only to dislike all foreign media but is also critical about the Chinese media cause it's becoming more and more commercialized and due to that fact doesn't report the really important stories, like SARS. So it was not the provincial government who first suppressed reports, but the commercialized media. Interesting, isn't it?

Would Lincoln attack Taiwan?

2005-03-14T09:56:00.000+01:00

Another nice example how things can get a little mixed up in our postmodern times. According to the HK Standart those Chinese in favor of the anti-secession bill have a new national model-hero, and this time it even is a foreigner. His name - Abraham Lincoln.
The argument goes, that as Lincoln opposed a secession of the southern states of the USA and went to war to prevent it, today the government of mainland China fights heroic against a secession of Taiwan, and also has the right to attack Taiwan if there are steps undertaken to declare Taiwanese independence.
Isn´t that a great piece of spin?

我是可持续论者

2005-03-13T13:49:00.000+01:00

After yesterday creating this blog, today its time to try something new: write in Chinese. Topic stays the same, Pan Yue (潘岳). It works, great : ) .
I was a little bit surprised how clear and drastic he described the environmental problems China is facing -after all he is a high rank government official and not some kind of Greenpeace activist-, so I did a little research on him. According to the International Herald Tribune, which had an article about him in September 2004, he "has become known nationwide for his outspokenness"; and he has big plans for the future. In an article in Renminwang (thanks to chinablätter for the link) he describes himself as a "Sustainalist" (可持续论者), says that the year 2005 will be the "Year of environmental protection" and announces a "tempest of environmental protection" (环保风暴).
Good luck to him. Looking forward to here more from him.

Ecological Hardliner goes west

2005-03-12T17:43:00.000+01:00

Seems that environmental protection becomes more and more important to the Chinese government. At least if you believe that Pan Yue (Deputy Director of the State Environmental Protection Administration of the PRC) means what he says. Running Dog already wondered some time ago if the environmental watchdog has grown some teeth, and now Pan Yue even gives interviews to western media in which he states that "The Chinese Miracle Will End Soon" (in the English edition of the German based magazin Spiegel) if there is nothing done about environmental pollution. Lets hope he not only means what he says, but also has the means and the backup to do it.

Shulan

2005-03-12T16:39:00.000+01:00

The fellow earthling this blog is dedicated to.