See: http://palladium.bre.co.uk/trk/click?ref=zu2nl520g_0-1c0x34a0x09646&
19/06/2013
China launches trial carbon trading scheme
Despite not signing up to past Climate Change protocols, China seems to be doing more than most on reducing its carbon footprint.
18/06/2013
Chinese censors target Winnie the Pooh and Tigger
The Telegraph: “Chinese censors target Winnie the Pooh and Tigger
China’s army of internet censors have picked an unusual target in their battle to wipe dissent from the country’s computer screens: Winnie the Pooh and Tigger.
The two images were published side by side this week on the Twitter-like Chinese social media site Weibo. Photo: REUTERS
Following the recent California summit between Barack Obama and Chinese president Xi Jinping, Chinese micro-bloggers picked up on an uncanny resemblance between a photograph of the two presidents strolling through the Sunnylands estate and a cartoon image of A. A. Milne’s cartoon creations.
The two images were published side by side this week on the Twitter-like Chinese social media site Weibo.
But the posts were almost immediately “harmonized”, as censors appeared to take exception to the comparison between their president and a podgy bear who once roamed Sussex’s Ashdown Forest.
Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post said over-zealous censors had “nipped in the bud what could have been a positive PR campaign tailor-made for President Xi Jinping.”
The Communist Party’s internet censors often appear determined to delete even the slightest hint of government criticism from social media sites.
Earlier this month, authorities targeted a photo-shopped image – also on Weibo – of the famous Tiananmen Square photograph in which a lone protester faces down a line of tanks. The image – in which the tanks were replaced with giant rubber ducks – irritated authorities enough that not only did they remove the picture itself, they also blocked all internet searches related to the squeaky bath toys.
The Weibo Photoshopped image which caused irritated Chinese authorities to block all internet searches related to rubber ducks. (WEIBO)”
via Chinese censors target Winnie the Pooh and Tigger – Telegraph.
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- who’s afraid of winnie the pooh? (bloodandtreasure.typepad.com)
- Netizens pooh-pooh Weibo as Pooh pic of US-China poobahs barred (wantchinatimes.com)
- Update on Pooh, Tigger, and the 2 Presidents: Art Recreates Life, not Vice Versa (theatlantic.com)
18/06/2013
Getting China’s Tower of Babel on Record
WSJ: “Michael Wu, 20, a student at Peking University, grew up in Shanghai. But when he wants to talk to his cousins in Hainan, he needs to bring his mother along to interpret the conversation.
The cousins in Hainan speak two kinds of Hainan dialect. “I actually cannot understand either of them,” Wu says. “It’s actually not much good for me to [try to] communicate with them.”
In China, that’s a common problem: The differences in dialects are so vast they amount to different languages—possibly more than 3,000 variations, according to some estimates. It’s one of the reasons that standard Beijing Mandarin has become the lingua franca of schools, businesses and government in China. But that uniformity comes at a cost: the rapid loss of many of these dialects.
Now two Americans have taken on a daunting task: trying to get an audio record of all of the thousands of China’s languages and dialects before they disappear.
Linguists Steve Hansen and Kellen Parker are enlisting volunteers to canvass the country to capture both the languages and the stories of all of China’s 2,862 counties and 34 provincial areas. Phonemica, founded last year, now has about 200 Chinese and Chinese-speaking foreign volunteers lined up to record their friends, parents and grandparents, telling a story in fangyan (regional speech).
“The idea is that we want to record it all,” says Mr. Hansen. “And the only way to do this is through a crowd-sourced approach. We’re trying to get people involved who will go to their hometowns and record friends and relatives.”
“It is absolutely unique,” said Victor Mair, a professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, by email. “No one else is attempting to do this for Sinitic” (the languages of China).
Phonemica is nearly out of time. Scholars say that a few generations from now, all of China will speak as a first language standard Mandarin, the Beijing dialect that is taught in schools and used by new migrants to cities as well as businesspeople in every province.
Richard VanNess Simmons, a Rutgers professor of Chinese, says that as China’s economy has taken off over the past 20 years, “Mandarin has become the language that gets you somewhere and the language that parents want their kids to learn.” Even parents who speak regional dialects prefer that their children speak Mandarin at home.
“It’s happening so fast it’s almost too fast to document,” he says.
The Chinese government also has taken on the task of recording the country’s dialects, but its Chinese Language Resource Audio Database (中国语言资源有声数据) is still in the “fieldwork” stage, says Mr. Simmons, and “no results have yet been published as far as I know.””
via Getting China’s Tower of Babel on Record – China Real Time Report – WSJ.
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- Trying to Save the Chinese Language From Itself (tealeafnation.com)
- Introduction to the most spoken language in the world (toochinese.wordpress.com)
- About “Chinese” Language (sourcesofknowledge.wordpress.com)
- The Mandarin Chinese dialect (uosm2018.wordpress.com)
18/06/2013
China destroys Belgian chocolates as trade spat intensifies
The Independent: “BELGIANS are justly proud of their nation’s reputation as one of the world’s finest chocolate producers. So when Chinese authorities announced this week that they had destroyed an unspecified amount of their chocolates because they contained toxic substances, alarm bells rang.
The Belgian media was swift to point out echoes of 2008, when Beijing declared a shipment of Belgian chocolate “not suitable for human consumption”. That snub was widely seen as tit-for-tat retaliation after the Brussels-based European Union banned Chinese soy-bean imports over high levels of toxic substances. Could it be coincidence that the latest trashing of the national delicacy comes as the EU pursues import tariffs on Chinese solar panels, local newspapers asked?
While the link between the discarded chocolates and the solar panels has yet to advance beyond conspiracy theory, it is not too far-fetched given the other signature European products including French wine and German cars already dragged into a trade spat souring EU-China relations and on the agenda at EU trade ministers’ talks on Friday.
The alleged bout of recent score-settling began earlier this month, when the EU said it was going to impose tariffs of up to 47 per cent on solar panels made in China. The bloc accused China of “dumping” the panels in Europe – a trade term for selling a product for less than the production cost in an attempt to corner the market.
Within days, the Chinese announced that they were launching their own investigation into the sale of French wine in China, now the biggest export market for Bordeaux. The commerce ministry argued the agricultural subsidies handed out to French farmers put domestic producers at an unfair disadvantage.
Next to take a hit were German car makers. The Financial Times reported last week that Beijing was mulling a lodging a complaint over imports of luxury cars – another growth market in the booming Chinese economy.
“They are picking products for which China is an important market and that is good bargaining, to attack where it hurts, and it is very symbolic,” said André Sapir, a senior fellow specialising in trade at the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank.”
via China destroys Belgian chocolates as trade spat intensifies – Independent.ie.
18/06/2013
Mao’s birthday: Party time
The Economist: “THERE was a time, just a few months ago, when some analysts were speculating that new leaders preparing to take over in China wanted to abandon Mao. If it ever seemed likely then, it is looking far less so now. The new helmsman, Xi Jinping, has been showing no sign of squeamishness about the horrors of that era. Preparations are under way for big celebrations of Mao’s 120th birthday on December 26th. Mr Xi will likely use the occasion to pay fulsome homage.
On June 5th the party chief of Hunan, Xu Shousheng, paid a visit to one of his province’s most-visited attractions: Mao’s rural birthplace in Shaoshan village (the Hunan Daily’s report is here, in Chinese). There he laid a wreath before a bronze statue of the late chairman. Mr Xu has good economic reasons for showing obeisance. Last year the province earned nearly $4.6 billion from “red tourism”, as pilgrimages to historic Communist sites are known (a local newspaper, in Chinese, describes hopes to boost this by more than 20% in 2013). But Mr Xu made clear he was not there just to drum up business for Hunan. The central leadership, he said, was attaching “great importance” to the birthday celebrations. The entire nation, he said, was paying “great attention”.
Hunan officials are pulling out all the stops. In September it was reported that Xiangtan prefecture, which governs the village, was planning to spend 15.5 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) on 16 projects described as “presents” for Mao (see here, in Chinese). These include the refurbishing of a Mao museum in Shaoshan, a new road around the tourist area, a new drainage system for nearby Shaoshan city and the building of a new community called Hope Town for local farmers (described here). Shaoshan village is organising cultural performances, an academic conference and a “big gathering” to mark the anniversary, as well as the usual handout of free “happiness and longevity noodles” to visitors on the big day (see here, in Chinese, for a list of this year’s events in Shaoshan and here, in English, for some of the traditional ones).
It is all but certain that Mr Xi will feature prominently in the celebrations. His two immediate predecessors both gave speeches in praise of Mao on similar occasions: Hu Jintao in 2003, on the 110th anniversary (here, in Chinese), and Jiang Zemin in 1993, on the 100th (here, in Chinese). The signs are that Mr Xi will strike a similar tone. In January he told colleagues in the ruling Politburo that the achievements of the post-Mao era should not be used to negate those of the earlier years of Communist rule, and vice versa. In May a Beijing newspaper revealed that Mr Xi had also quoted Deng Xiaoping as saying that repudiation of Mao could lead to chaos (see here, in Chinese).
But in the coming months Mr Xi might be wary of overdoing the adulation. In the autumn he will preside over a crucial meeting of the party’s central committee that he apparently hopes will approve plans for wide-ranging economic reforms. Encouraging Maoists could play into the hands of what liberals in China call “interest groups”, such as large state-owned enterprises, that stand in the way of reform.
Fuelling Maoist fervour could also make it more difficult to handle the case of Bo Xilai, a Politburo member who was expelled from the party in November for alleged abuses of power, including complicity in the murder of a British businessman. Mr Bo is a darling of die-hard Maoists who believe that, for all the party’s lip-service to Mao, the country has fallen prey to the worst excesses of capitalism. He is widely expected to be put on trial in the coming months. Mr Xi does not want to encourage supporters of Mr Bo.”
via Mao’s birthday: Party time | The Economist.
Related articles
- You: China’s Xi Jinping appears more Maoist than reformer so far (latimes.com)
- Economist Mao Yushi Warns of a ‘Leftist Revival’ in China (economicpolicyjournal.com)
18/06/2013
Growth of Chinese Military Growth
This link comes courtesy of one of our readers: Aria Cahill – http://www.militaryeducation.org/chinese-military-growth/
Thank you, Aria.
See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2013/04/16/china-issues-white-paper-on-national-defense/
18/06/2013
Papua New Guinea reconsiders China as a partner
So not everyone who is wooed by China responds without reservations!
09/06/2013
China Talent Outflow Highest in the World, People’s Daily Says
Bloomberg: “China is losing top-notch talent at the highest rate in the world as students who seek degrees abroad opt to remain overseas, the official People’s Daily newspaper reported today.
An average of 87 percent of students in science and engineering stay overseas, the newspaper said, citing an official from a government working group on talent whom it didn’t identify. China needs to compete better for human talent, the report cited the official as saying.
Young Chinese have flocked to overseas schools in search of degrees. The country’s policy of limiting many couples to one child and its growing wealth mean middle-class families can afford U.S. tuition that far exceeds the costs of Chinese universities.
Chinese citizens now account for the largest proportion of foreign students at U.S. universities, the Institute of International Education said in a November report. Chinese enrollments at U.S. universities in the 2011-2012 academic year increased by 23 percent, it said.
The country lacks high-level innovative and entrepreneurial talent, the People’s Daily cited the official as saying. Investment is not sufficient and institutional obstacles have not been eliminated, it said.”
via China Talent Outflow Highest in the World, People’s Daily Says – Bloomberg.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 