Those who defaced Mao's portrait

Dated 2006.02.22

The last of three protesters jailed by the Chinese authorities for defacing the portrait of Mao Zedong during the 1989 protests on Tiananmen Square has been released after serving 17 years in jail [after originally having been sentenced to life in prison]...

Asked about Yu Dongyue’s physical condition, his sister, Yu Rixia, told RFA's Mandarin service: “His health is not very good. He can not manage his own personal chores. The priority now is for him to adjust to the current situation and hope that his health can be gradually improved.”...

She said she had visited her brother several times during his imprisonment and had been shocked to see his health deteriorate but was unable to help him.

Yu Dongyue was in a solitary confinement when she made a trip to visit him in 1994, she said, adding that she was therefore unable to visit with him...

Wu said the family had kept Yu Dongyue’s release quiet following the detention of fellow Mao portrait protester Yu Zhijian [sentenced to 16 years in prison] after a visit to the family home Saturday...

[After 16 years in prison on the charge of counterrevolutionary sabotage and incitement, the third protester, Lu Decheng, was offered political asylum in Canada in April, 2006]...

The three men come from the same hometown, where Lu Decheng and Yu Zhijian were playmates as children, while Yu Zhijian and Yu Dongyue were classmates at school, Lu said.

Before they defaced the Mao portrait on May 23, 1989, all three had been active in the pro-democracy movement in the provincial capital Changsha, traveling to Beijing in mid-May that year to join thousands of demonstrators on Tiananmen Square.

Yu Dongyue, Lu, and Yu Zhijian were handed over to national security police after prolonged negotiations with the student command on the Square, a decision Lu and Yu Zhijian regard as having been made with the broader interests of the student movement in mind.

Spoofing fights back

August 10
A conference was organized by the conservative Guangming Daily in Beijing to discuss and condemn the e gao (恶搞) phenomenon, i.e. mocking online video clips and photoshopped stills.

Piracy hurts Chinese companies, too

The Blackberry's probable fizzle illustrates an endemic problem in a country with a poor track record of enforcing intellectual property rights.

"Piracy is something that affects everybody in China," said Mark Natkin, managing director of Beijing-based research firm Marbridge Consulting. "Domestic Chinese companies got hit just as hard, if not harder."

Banned In China

The link will probably soon go dead. It concerns ads/entertainment that
is disrespectful to Chinese culture. Reasons given:

• fails to "follow procedure"
• "to protect intellectual property rights"
• songs whose lyrics are too sexually explicit (Coco Lee’s “So Good,” “Touch” and “No Doubt”)
• failing to take into account China's sensitivity about atrocities committed by Japanese during the country's occupation of China (Memoirs of a Geisha)
  
• deals with homosexuality (Brokeback Mountain)

'Little Emperors' Learn the Hard Way in China

One woman believes the only way to rein in all [the "little emperors" of China's one-child generation who run amok at home and in school] is to stop sparing the rod. At Wan Guoyin's West Point, every child knows the consequences of bad behavior.

The worst offenders get a whipping, minus their shirts, even in the dead of winter, and in front of the entire school. Minor offenses such as cussing can result in being forced to swallow a spoonful of hot chili sauce or chew on a bitter herb that turns the tongue yellow for hours...

"We do it more for the humiliation than the pain," said [schoolmistress Wan Guoyin], 47, who looks nothing like Cruella De Vil in her simple black cotton dress, braided hair reaching to her waist. "The goal is to give them a memorable lesson."

Wan got the idea for the school a few years ago when she was a guest on a radio program about problem children. The former kindergarten teacher and mother of a 22-year-old daughter remembered that nearly 90% of the callers complained about disciplinary problems with their sons.

The Worship of Mammon: China's national religion

Go to the original for a slide show and the full text.

A roof is all [Yezong Zumu] needs until dawn, when she sets off again, chanting scriptures, fingering her prayer beads and slowly trekking around the sacred mountain, Xiannairi.

For almost all of her 67 years, it has been thus for this Buddhist - living close to nature, close to the spiritual and precariously close to starvation. It is not unusual in this southern corner of Sichuan province, where - such is the sense of the mystic, the beautiful landscape and the remoteness of the location - local people believe that they live in a real-life Shangri-la despite enduring the most wretched poverty.

But in recent years one of the fastest changes in world history has caught up with this remote place. First came the new road, then cars, electricity, TV and tourists. Now Yezong tells me - the only foreigner she has ever met - her family has an income. It has transformed her values. On this annual pilgrimage, she will pray for a good harvest, her family's health and peace. But asked for her greatest source of happiness, she says: 'Making money. If you have money you can do anything.'

...A glimpse of Shangri-la's future can be seen five hours' drive to the south-west in the mega-resort of Lijiang. A decade ago this tranquil community of bubbling streams, cobbled alleys and wooden homes was little known. Today it is a playground. Buses and planes arrive daily, disgorging their human contents into a fast-expanding city of hotels, bars and trinket stalls. At night the bubbling brooks are drowned out by raucous singing contests. There are few complaints, though...

Tourists are arriving in increasing numbers [to Yading - a Tibetan village in Sichuan province too remote to appear in most guidebooks]. Hotels and guides are cashing in. Women are arriving from faraway villages to work as waitresses and prostitutes. The provincial government talks of building a cable car up to one of the sacred sites. 'Our biggest source of happiness is the increase in tourists. Although their rubbish hurts the environment, they bring money,' says A Wangsiliang, fungus collector, Buddhist and secretary of the local Communist party. 'Our main worry is that the authorities will seize our land to build hotels, just as they did in the other Shangri-la.'..

Nobody would claim that China is a spiritual paradise, but attitudes are changing. Even in the Tibetan areas of Yunnan and Sichuan, where Buddhism is tightly controlled, the monks say more monasteries are opening and more people visiting as worshippers or tourists.

Marxist ideology has been undermined by the gulf between rich and poor, and the victory of competition over co-operation. It is evident in the crowds of beggars at the station the next day. Wang Chunlan, 80, left her Anhui home two years ago when her family were unable to grow enough food to feed themselves. Sleeping rough in the city, she says, is an improvement. 'In the past I had no income. I could only eat what we grew. But now every day I can get a few yuan. Today I was very lucky. A woman gave me 3 yuan (20 pence).' Prostitution, drug abuse, counterfeiting and organised crime are on the rise. Last year the government reported a record 87,000 public order disturbances. In appeals to the nation's morality, the government has begun mixing its communist rhetoric with Confucianism - evident in President Hu Jintao's oft-repeated aspiration to create a 'harmonious society'. On the train every carriage has a poster promoting the 'Eight Virtues and Eight Shames' - ideals advocated by the President in a speech this year. The conservative value system, which includes the dictum 'respect order, do not embrace chaos', owes more to old imperial hierarchies than the revolutionary ideals of the republic's founders...

Of the 28 people I interview on the journey, [only one saw a decline in income]. For two, it remained the same. The rest cited substantial increases. More than 20 said they were twice as well off as in 2001. Even given the growth of the economy over that time, this was impressive - particularly because we were passing through some of the poorest provinces. For this the government must be credited. Rather than rely only on the trickle-down effect, it has diverted £114bn to deprived inland regions under the 'Go West' policy.

Most surprisingly, the majority of people I met said their living environments had improved. Despite numerous warnings of river pollution, smog, desertification and acid rain, most people believed their drinking water was cleaner, air quality better and the forest cover thicker than five years ago.

Were the reports wrong? Were people being duped by propaganda? Or were perceived improvements of the environment, like religious freedom, simply relative to the dire standards of the past? Driving through the grim terrain of northern Shaanxi province and Inner Mongolia, it was hard to imagine how much worse it could have been. Once past the loess hills (and thousands more cave dwellings), we hit Yulin, where part of the Great Wall has been knocked down and replaced by a row of shops and apartment buildings. Soon after, we hit a sandstorm, then hundreds of miles of desert and scrubland, punctuated by cement factories, gravel pits, power plants and the occasional coal dump.

It is hard to imagine anything less like Shangri-la than this blasted landscape. When the dust storms blow in - eight so far this year - few venture outside without face masks or scarves to cover their mouths and eyes. The deserts are creeping closer to the cities because of the climate and more than two decades of rushed development, over-exploitation of water resources and deforestation.

Yet local people insist life is getting better. Incomes are rising...

In terms of raising living standards, China has come much further, much faster than many outsiders think; people are becoming aware of the need for a more sustainable model of development; and there is a hunger for something beyond the material. A brave minority are even willing to speak out about politics.

There was no utopia, no great drive for a religious or political ideal. Today the closest thing to a national religion is the worship of money, the only unifying belief a conviction 'life is getting better'. But there was a huge energy, immense optimism and an encouraging open-mindedness. Nobody expected paradise - communist or religious - any time soon, just an improvement in their daily lives and hopes for a China with 'more green and more blue'.

Although they're not the only ones: see Ambrose Bierce's definition of mammon:

The god of the world's leading religion. The chief temple is in the holy city of New York.

Migrant workers in China getting a voice

China's economic boom is built on the backs of 180 million farmers who've flocked to cities. Exploitation of this labor force has been widespread, but in recent years migrant workers have been getting a louder voice. Jocelyn Ford reports.

Full text and audio file at the link above.

Forget the World Bank, Try Wal-Mart

Michael Strong writes

Between 1990 and 2002 more than 174 million people escaped poverty in China, about 1.2 million per month.[1] With an estimated $23 billion in Chinese exports in 2005 (out of a total of $713 billion in manufacturing exports),[2] Wal-Mart might well be single-handedly responsible for bringing about 38,000 people out of poverty in China each month, about 460,000 per year.

There are estimates that 70 percent of Wal-Mart's products are made in China.[3] One writer vividly suggests that "One way to think of Wal-Mart is as a vast pipeline that gives non-U.S. companies direct access to the American market." [4] Even without considering the $263 billion in consumer savings that Wal-Mart provides for low-income Americans, or the millions lifted out of poverty by Wal-Mart in other developing nations, it is unlikely that there is any single organization on the planet that alleviates poverty so effectively for so many people.[5]

Mardi Gras: Made in China

Caution; the trailer is not safe for work. The site also has interesting reviews.

August 2006--the 40th anniversary of the start of Cultural Revolution.

Geremie R. Barmé's Beijing’s Bloody August: two first person accounts.

How to Find News Transcripts

Go to Morris library homepage.

• Look to the left side of the screen for the list of "Quick Links" and click on the third item, "Databases / Find Articles;"
• Go to "Browse indexes / databases by name" and click on the letter "A";
• The list of indices/databases will be displayed. Look for "Academic Search (Lexis-Nexis)" and click on the words;
• When the Lexis-Nexis screen has opened go the left side and find the words, "Academic Search Forms." Click on: "News";
• The new search screen will now be displayed. If the "Guided News Search" box is not displayed, switch to it by using the tabs at the top of the search box;
• Go to "Step One: Select a news category" and click on the arrow in the drop down box. Scroll down to the sixth item on the list, "Transcripts" and click on it;
• Go to "Step Two: Select a news source" and again click on the arrow. This time click on the desired item (e. g. National Public Radio Transcripts);
• Finally, enter a "Search Term(s)" and set the "Date" range, then click on the "Search" button.

Inside China's Economic Boom

• Chinese manufacturers have succeeded in saturating markets in low-tech labor-intensive products with little profit margin; they're pondering how their upward trajectory can be maintained
• One sign of the economic boom is construction.... Even official figures show that in some areas of China, 90 percent of land requisitioned by the government is seized illegally
• China's anti-counterfeiting organization says fake products now account for 27 percent of the country's industrial output. It's a booming market

57% of rural Chinese have never brushed their teeth

In the 1840s, an English author famously wrote that if every person in China lengthened his shirttail by a foot, British cotton mills would work around the clock.

The lure of China's massive untapped market has only increased over time. So how are today's multinationals tailoring their products and their strategies to attract China's millions of newly minted consumers?

Think ancient beauty potions and tea-flavored toothpaste...

Mao Zedong's logic for spurning a toothbrush was that "a tiger never brushes his teeth."

China's Web Retailers Beat U.S. Rivals At Their Own Game

As China's Internet booms, homegrown businesses are often reaping the biggest rewards -- a departure from many other consumer industries in China where foreigners have dominated.

Peggy Yu and her husband, Li Guoqing, founded online bookseller Dangdang.com in 1999, when online commerce in China was more hope than reality. Today, China boasts 123 million Internet users -- second only to the U.S. -- and a growing share of them are using the Web to shop. Dangdang has expanded into a range of new products and claims to be China's biggest online retailer. Its success has enabled Ms. Yu and Mr. Li to fend off competition from a deep-pocketed foreign rival, German media giant Bertelsmann AG, and to rebuff a takeover offer from Amazon.com Inc., which later bought Dangdang's chief Chinese rival.

Historically, foreign companies have taken the lion's share of many of China's consumer-focused markets, like those for cola, cars, and cellular phones. Dangdang's story -- and others like it -- demonstrates how local competitors in Internet businesses are battling back or even beating foreign rivals such as Amazon, Yahoo Inc., Google Inc., and eBay Inc.

Part of the reason for the locals' success is that China's Internet regulators have made it difficult for foreigners to participate in Internet businesses -- setting limits on foreign ownership, for example, and forcing companies that provide online content to adapt to Chinese censorship rules. Equally critical to success, analysts and executives say, is the ability of domestic companies to understand and adapt to some of the other peculiarities of China's market. Ms. Yu says Dangdang had to make adjustments to the model pioneered by Amazon.com and others. For example, the vast majority of Dangdang's Chinese buyers of books pay cash on delivery -- a result of the fact that credit cards still are relatively uncommon in China.

A typical buyer is Sandy Liu, a 27-year-old accountant with a trading company in Shanghai. She started using Dangdang in March based on a colleague's recommendation and has shopped there several times since. This month, she paid cash for two books and a tray table. She likes Dangdang because "it's very convenient," Ms. Liu says.

Edward Yu, president of Analysys International, a Beijing technology-research company, says foreign Internet companies sometimes don't give local managers enough leeway to adapt their businesses to local customs. Web companies from abroad also can find it difficult to establish local partnerships and distribution channels, he says. Those factors "definitely hurt their market performance when they are trying to compete head-to-head in the local market."

Google, which launched a major expansion into China last year, has continued to lag in popularity well behind Baidu.com Inc., the Nasdaq Stock Market-listed Chinese search-engine company. EBay, which bought a Chinese company in 2003, still trails rival site Taobao.com, which has dominated eBay in large part by offering its service to sellers free. After resisting that model for years, eBay late last year started offering free service to sellers, too.

Yahoo, one of the earliest foreign Internet companies to invest in China, announced a year ago that it was handing over control of its China operations -- along with a $1 billion investment -- to Alibaba.com Corp., the company that owns Taobao....

Viewpoint: China on the verge
By William Pesek Jr. Bloomberg News
SUNDAY, AUGUST 13, 2006

It's hard to get excited about China's efforts to slow its white-hot economy. Sure, the world is watching - it has to. An overheated China that spirals into crisis could make the region's 1997 meltdown look negligible. China, after all, is the world's No.4 economy and one that even Japan - the second-biggest - is relying on for growth.

The United States also has a big stake in a Chinese soft landing. Corporate America has found China's cheap labor and land to be ideal for boosting profits in a competitive world. And then there is the $326 billion of Treasuries held by China's central bank. That keeps U.S. interest rates low and consumers in the stores.

Even so, it's difficult to buy into the view that China really wants to slow its economy, at least not significantly. To date, its efforts smack more of public relations than genuine steps to reduce growth. Then again, how would China do it?

It's often pointed out that China is a command economy controlled by officials in Beijing. Yet they have far less sway over their $2.2 trillion economy than many analysts assume, and China's model is to blame. Increasingly, local governments are dominating development. Since they benefit from all the investment rushing to China - and creating risks of overheating - they're loath to tap on the brakes.

Not only does China lack the kind of vibrant debt markets that could make its monetary policies more potent, it also has little power over some of the forces driving the economy, which grew 11.3 percent in the second quarter.

Where can China look for direction? Asia's 1997 crisis may offer some clues about what China is experiencing at the moment, and where it's headed.

On the face of it, the events that slammed Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea before denting markets around the globe seem of little relevance to China. A major trigger for the crisis was Thailand's devaluation on July 2, 1997. China is almost universally thought to have an undervalued currency. It also avoided the first crisis, keeping the yuan pegged in 1997 rather than devaluing it.

Yet there are some intriguing similarities between the challenges facing China today and the ones Asia confronted nine years ago. Just as with many economies in the region in 1997, investors are concerned about the quality of Chinese growth.

Lost in the hype about China's rise is the reality that much of the economic expansion is powered by public spending and by investment from abroad. In other words, there's little about China's boom that's self-sustaining. Asia was in that situation in 1997.

Together with exports, investment has catapulted China's economy past the United Kingdom in the 28 years since Deng Xiaoping's free-market changes. In the most recent quarter, gross domestic product grew at the fastest pace since 1994, when the economy was a quarter of its current size. And yet, China has one of the world's lowest ratios of household spending to GDP.

The kinds of overcapacity in industries and unproductive investments that were at the root of the Asian crisis abound in China. What's fascinating about China's rise is how it's all good. It's the place to be, it's thought to be run by geniuses and anyone who isn't rushing there is a fool. Yet China must create millions of jobs each year to maintain stability, while also slowing growth. That's quite a challenge.

Just as in Asia before 1997, investors and corporate executives are so dazzled by China's growth that they're willing to overlook the risks of it all coming to an end. To them, it's China's vast potential and its 1.3 billion people that matter, not a rickety financial system, rampant pollution or the risk of social instability.

Unfolding around China today is one of the greatest building booms in history. A dozen cities vying to be the next Shanghai are constructing five-star hotels, shopping centers, six-lane highways, universities, airports, you name it. It's all being financed with debt that could go bad if the economy slows. China also is producing too much cement, aluminum, clothing and other goods. In that way, the country has its fair share of deflationary pressures to offset concern it may overheat.

In the years since 1997, Asian economies have tried to move away from so-called fixed-asset investments such as schools, roads, factories, dams and bridges, in favor of stimulating consumer spending. At the moment, spending on such projects only adds to China's overcapacity. Over time, that may crimp corporate profits and exacerbate the bad-debt threat for banks.

China's currency is also the target of more and more speculators. No foreign-exchange trader would test China's resolve to keep the yuan from strengthening. It's intriguing, though, that just as in Asia's case in 1997, China's economic pressures are showing up in its exchange rate.

None of this means a Chinese crisis is imminent. Officials in Beijing have proven remarkably astute at keeping things from running out of control. Yet if China is searching for a glimpse of what lies ahead, Asia's experience may provide some insight.

From Media Schizophrenia in China by David Moser:

In an article in the online version of the People's Daily (January 17, 2004), Qin Mingxin, deputy director of the international department of CCTV's Entertainment Program Center expressed his misgivings about the proposed broadcast. "I had thought the play focused on friendship, but after a careful preview I found each episode had something to do with sex. Also, the attitudes of the six close-knit young friends in the play cannot be generally accepted by Chinese audiences yet," he said. Furthermore, Qin explained why merely cutting the references to sex wouldn't work: "Most youth on the Chinese mainland have watched the play and feel passionate about it. If we make too much trimming, I'm afraid they will not agree. But it is also impossible to accept it uncritically. First, a large number of slang and jokes are hard to convey…Second, much content of Friends, considered healthy in the United States, still seems unacceptable to the Chinese."

Here the CCTV official is exhibiting a rather confused mental state typical of living and functioning amidst these conflicting parallel domains. This article is framed by the implicit knowledge on the part of the reader that Friends has already been available and popular in China for years. Yet he informs us that the attitudes of the characters "cannot be generally accepted by Chinese audiences." In the next breath he acknowledges that "most youths on the Chinese mainland have watched the play and feel passionate about it." Then he then loops back to his original evaluation, telling us that, though the sexual content is accepted in the US, it "still seems unacceptable to the Chinese." Well, which is it? Is the youthful audience "passionate" about the show or made uneasy by it?

Cf. Chinese Tech Buffs Slake Thirst for U.S. TV Shows By HOWARD W. FRENCH

Mr. Ding, 23, an Internet technology expert for a large Chinese bank, chuckled at the thought. He has kept himself in virtual seclusion during his off hours, consumed with American television programs like "Lost," "C.S.I." and "Close to Home."

He is no ordinary fan, though; none of the shows he watches can be seen on Chinese television. Instead, he spends night after night creating Chinese subtitles for American sitcoms and dramas for a mushrooming audience of Chinese viewers who download them from the Internet free through services like BitTorrent...

...the adapters say they are willing to devote long hours to this effort out of a love for American popular culture. Many, including Mr. Ding, say they learned English by obsessively watching American movies and television programs.

Others say they pick up useful knowledge about everything from changing fashion and mores to medical science.

"It provides cultural background relating to every aspect of our lives: politics, history and human culture," Mr. Ding said. "These are the things that make American TV special. When I first started watching 'Friends,' I found the show was full of information about American history and showed how America had rapidly developed. It's more interesting than textbooks or other ways of learning."

On an Internet forum about the downloaded television shows, a poster who used the name Plum Blossom put it another way.

"After watching these shows for some time, I felt the attitudes of some of the characters were beginning to influence me," the poster wrote. "It's hard to describe, but I think I learned a way of life from some of them. They are good at simplifying complex problems, which I think has something to do with American culture."..

China combines a fast-growing population of more than 123 million Internet users, most with access to broadband service, with a stultifying television culture. The state-owned national network, CCTV, has 16 broadcast channels, but they vary little in their mixture of endless historical dramas, tepid soap operas and copycat game shows.

In an e-mail interview, a fan of American television shows who goes by the name of Happyidea and who asked not to be further identified gave this assessment of the Chinese programming: "Our own actors are not bad. Those responsible for making Chinese TV shows pathetic are the directors, screenwriters, editors and the people doing the lighting, music, special effects and makeup. There are bits of poor quality in every aspect, and it adds up to total trash."..

"CCTV-8 aired 'Desperate Housewives' and we made a point of watching it," said Jin Bo, 25, an English teacher and member of YDY, a leading rival to Fengruan. "I thought, Oh my God, the dubbing, the translation, why is it all so bad? It lost what made the original show wonderful, and the ratings were extremely low."

Chindia's Workforce Worries By Nandani Lynton compares China & India. About China, he says,

China is a rapidly aging society whose current challenges of unemployment and overpopulation will, within a decade, shift to different problems: labor shortages and an elderly population with too few children. In fact, China may be the first country to go gray before it reaches developed status. The World Bank estimates that by 2020 the mainland will face a lack of even unskilled labor due to aging.

China is already facing a shortage of skilled labor. Construction sites lack welders, skilled machine operators, and plumbers. And a recent NASSCOM-McKinsey report said the country is short some 750,000 managers. Despite a 95% literacy rate among all but the oldest citizens, there are not enough well-educated Chinese. This is in part due to a lack of schools that combine basic theory with practical skills and a focus on passing the elite university exams. So despite rising salaries, many of those entering China's workforce cannot learn the skills they need...

China graduates about 1.7 million students from 1,500 colleges and universities annually, of whom 350,000 are engineers. India produces about 3 million college and university graduates, including 440,000 engineers. Those numbers, though, don't tell the whole story. The McKinsey report states that only 10% to 25% of these graduates are employable by multinationals, and this is only partially because of language challenges. Every human resources executive I've met who works in China or India agrees with this evaluation.

The source of the problem is cultural. Young people in these countries are highly motivated to study and learn, but only in theory. There is no tradition of practical application. So engineers don't go into operations, factories, or mines, and don't really know the machines and conditions for which they are designing processes. Chinese and Indian students who have just earned BAs want to pursue MBAs right away, and neither they nor their parents understand the value of practical experience. The degree is seen as a trophy, a traditional ticket to higher status.

These trophies are worth very little in the workplace... Multinationals with flat hierarchies grapple with the discomfort Chinese middle managers feel in speaking up during meetings -- even within their own group of colleagues -- if a boss is present.

China and India share the problem of new graduates who become managers before they are 30 because they are smart, speak English well, and are willing to learn. But their lack of experience in dealing with others both above and below them can cause problems in managing people and in dealing with clients who expect someone more senior.

These young managers, however, are communicative and willing to question authority and give feedback. Their direct superiors, meanwhile, may have the professional knowledge and experience that companies need. But they're often more withdrawn socially and unwilling to push back in meetings with their own superiors.