Archive for ‘reputation’

28/05/2020

China’s Civil Code adopted at national legislature

BEIJING, May 28 (Xinhua) — Chinese lawmakers Thursday voted to adopt the country’s long-expected Civil Code at the third session of the 13th National People’s Congress, the top legislature.

The Civil Code will take effect on Jan. 1, 2021.

In addition to general provisions and supplementary provisions, the Civil Code, the world’s latest modern-day civil law, has six parts on real rights, contracts, personality rights, marriage and family, succession, and tort liabilities.

The personal rights, property rights and other lawful rights and interests of the parties to civil legal relations shall be protected by law and shall not be infringed upon by any organization or individual, reads the Civil Code in its opening chapter.

Lawmakers say the codification is not about formulating a new civil law but rather systematically incorporating existing civil laws and regulations, modifying and improving them to adapt to new situations while maintaining their consistency.

A major innovation of China’s Civil Code, jurists say, is embodied in the personality rights part. While some countries have related law provisions, few have a specific law book in civil code dedicated to protecting personality rights.

The personality rights part covers stipulations on a civil subject’s rights to his or her life, body, health, name, portrait, reputation and privacy, among others.

The personality rights part shows that China has reached a new height in protecting the dignity of people, said Chen Jingying, a national lawmaker and vice president of East China University of Political Science and Law.

The Civil Code is a milestone in developing the socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics, and will greatly boost the modernization of China’s system and capacity for governance, said Wang Yi, dean of the law school at Renmin University of China.

Source: Xinhua

19/04/2020

Asian countries more receptive to China’s coronavirus ‘face mask diplomacy’

  • Faced with a backlash from the West over its handling of the early stages of the pandemic, Beijing has been quietly gaining ground in Asia
  • Teams of experts and donations of medical supplies have been largely welcomed by China’s neighbours
Despite facing some criticism from the West, China’s Asian neighbours have welcomed its medical expertise and vital supplies. Photo: Xinhua
Despite facing some criticism from the West, China’s Asian neighbours have welcomed its medical expertise and vital supplies. Photo: Xinhua
While China’s campaign to mend its international image in the wake of its handling of the coronavirus health crisis has been met with scepticism and even a backlash from the US and its Western allies, Beijing has been quietly gaining ground in Asia.
Teams of experts have been sent to Cambodia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Pakistan and soon to Malaysia, to share their knowledge from the pandemic’s ground zero in central China.
Beijing has also donated or facilitated shipments of medical masks and ventilators to countries in need. And despite some of the equipment failing to meet Western quality standards, or being downright defective, the supplies have been largely welcomed in Asian countries.
China has also held a series of online “special meetings” with its Asian neighbours, most recently on Tuesday when Premier Li Keqiang discussed his country’s experiences in combating the disease and rebooting a stalled economy with the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Japan and South Korea.
Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang speaks to Asean Plus Three leaders during a virtual summit on Tuesday. Photo: AP
Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang speaks to Asean Plus Three leaders during a virtual summit on Tuesday. Photo: AP
Many Western politicians have publicly questioned Beijing’s role and its subsequent handling of the crisis but Asian leaders – including Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – have been reluctant to blame the Chinese government, while also facing criticism at home for not closing their borders with China soon enough to prevent the spread of the virus.

An official from one Asian country said attention had shifted from the early stages of the outbreak – when disgruntled voices among the public were at their loudest – as people watched the virus continue its deadly spread through their homes and across the world.

“Now everybody just wants to get past the quarantine,” he said. “China has been very helpful to us. It’s also closer to us so it’s easier to get shipments from them. The [medical] supplies keep coming, which is what we need right now.”

The official said also that while the teams of experts sent by Beijing were mainly there to observe and offer advice, the gesture was still appreciated.

Another Asian official said the tardy response by Western governments in handling the outbreak had given China an advantage, despite its initial lack of transparency over the outbreak.

“The West is not doing a better job on this,” he said, adding that his government had taken cues from Beijing on the use of propaganda in shaping public opinion and boosting patriotic sentiment in a time of crisis.

“Because it happened in China first, it has given us time to observe what works in China and adopt [these measures] for our country,” the official said.

Experts in the region said that Beijing’s intensifying campaign of “mask diplomacy” to reverse the damage to its reputation had met with less resistance in Asia.

Why China’s ‘mask diplomacy’ is raising concern in the West

29 Mar 2020

“Over the past two months or so, China, after getting the Covid-19 outbreak under control, has been using a very concerted effort to reshape the narrative, to pre-empt the narrative that China is liable for this global pandemic, that China has to compensate other countries,” said Richard Heydarian, a Manila-based academic and former policy adviser to the Philippine government.

“It doesn’t help that the US is in lockdown with its domestic crisis and that we have someone like President Trump who is more interested in playing the blame game rather than acting like a global leader,” he said.

Shahriman Lockman, a senior analyst with the foreign policy and security studies programme at Malaysia’s Institute of Strategic and International Studies, said that as the US had withdrawn into its own affairs as it struggled to contain the pandemic, China had found Southeast Asia a fertile ground for cultivating an image of itself as a provider.

China’s first-quarter GDP shrinks for the first time since 1976 as coronavirus cripples economy
Beijing’s highly publicised delegations tasking medical equipment and supplies had burnished that reputation, he said, adding that the Chinese government had also “quite successfully shaped general Southeast Asian perceptions of its handling of the pandemic, despite growing evidence that it could have acted more swiftly at the early stages of the outbreak in Wuhan”.
“Its capacity and will to build hospitals from scratch and put hundreds of millions of people on lockdown are being compared to the more indecisive and chaotic responses seen in the West, especially in Britain and the United States,” he said.
Coronavirus droplets may travel further than personal distancing guidelines
16 Apr 2020

Lockman said Southeast Asian countries had also been careful to avoid getting caught in the middle of the deteriorating relationship between Beijing and Washington as the two powers pointed fingers at each other over the origins of the new coronavirus.

“The squabble between China and the United States about the pandemic is precisely what Asean governments would go to great lengths to avoid because it is seen as an expression of Sino-US rivalry,” he said.

“Furthermore, the immense Chinese market is seen as providing an irreplaceable route towards Southeast Asia’s post-pandemic economic recovery.”

Aaron Connelly, a research fellow in Southeast Asian political change and foreign policy with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore, said Asian countries’ dependence on China had made them slow to blame China for the pandemic.

“Anecdotally, it seems to me that most Southeast Asian political and business elites have given Beijing a pass on the initial cover-up of Covid-19, and high marks for the domestic lockdown that followed,” he said.

“This may be motivated reasoning, because these elites are so dependent on Chinese trade and investment, and see little benefit in criticising China.”

China and Vietnam ‘likely to clash again’ as they build maritime militias

12 Apr 2020
The cooperation with its neighbours as they grapple with the coronavirus had not slowed China’s military and research activities in the disputed areas of the South China Sea – a point of contention that would continue to cloud relations in the region, experts said.
Earlier this month an encounter in the South China Sea with a Chinese coastguard vessel led to the sinking of a fishing boat from Vietnam, which this year assumed chairmanship of Asean.
And in a move that could spark fresh regional concerns, shipping data on Thursday showed a controversial Chinese government survey ship, the Haiyang Dizhi 8, had moved closer to Malaysia’s exclusive economic zone.
The survey ship was embroiled in a months-long stand-off last year with Vietnamese vessels within Hanoi’s exclusive economic zone and was spotted again on Tuesday 158km (98 miles) off the Vietnamese coast.
Source: SCMP
19/11/2019

It’s a dirty job and I’m the one to do it, says millionaire who risks his reputation to break China’s litter habit

  • Every morning and night for the past four years, businessman Zhong Congrong has been on the streets of Chongqing to stop people dropping their litter
  • Admired as a welfare champion, the 54-year-old says he has been beaten and insulted for his cause
Zhong Congrong is a familiar figure on the streets of his hometown. Photo: Handout
Zhong Congrong is a familiar figure on the streets of his hometown. Photo: Handout

Zhong Congrong owns three businesses in southwestern China which together are worth more than 100 million yuan (US$14.3 million), but he prefers to risk being labelled as an environment “nut” who wants to clean up Chongqing.

Every morning after breakfast and each evening after supper, the entrepreneur pulls on an orange T-shirt, gets into his Mercedes-Benz SUV and heads downtown. For one or two hours, he walks the streets, picking scraps of rubbish off the road and talking to passers-by about littering.

“It is my mission to change people’s bad habits and to raise their awareness of protecting the environment,” said Zhong, who has been on this mission for four years. It has brought the 54-year-old civic rewards, earned him a bruising or two from people who do not want to listen to his message and it nearly cost him his marriage.

Throughout it all, he has remained a persistent voice for the environment in the city of more than 30 million people and, as some of them have learned, he refuses to give up.

Yang Zuhui (right) has come to admire Zhong Congrong’s dedication to his litter picking mission, but she fears for her husband’s safety. Photo: Weibo
Yang Zuhui (right) has come to admire Zhong Congrong’s dedication to his litter picking mission, but she fears for her husband’s safety. Photo: Weibo

On mainland China, cities have banned littering and some hit offenders with fines as high as 200 yuan. However, the rules are rarely obeyed and feebly enforced, and while there are plenty of dustbins in public places, litter is still a nuisance.

Zhong said his mission started in 2015 after he met a woman in her 70s in Sanya, the southern coastal city on the South China Sea island of Hainan. He was struck by how dedicated she and her husband were when they went litter picking each day.

“They are retired professors from a prestigious university in Beijing,” Zhong said. “I chatted a lot with her and I asked her, ‘What’s the point of collecting rubbish every day? You clean up the beach today, but tomorrow new rubbish appears’.”

The way to solve the problem was to teach people to not litter, she told him, but she said she “dared not” try to do that. Zhong said that encounter gave him his purpose and he would dare to change attitudes.

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Back home, Zhong watched and learned – concluding that customers of restaurants and fast food businesses tended to be the people who dropped rubbish most.

“Perhaps it’s because when people dine in restaurants, they throw their rubbish wherever they like. Going outside, they keep on doing it,” he said.

“People in shopping malls are generally more civilised.”

Zhong says his mission began in 2015 during a holiday on the island of Hainan. Photo: Dickson Lee
Zhong says his mission began in 2015 during a holiday on the island of Hainan. Photo: Dickson Lee

While on patrol, Zhong makes himself easy to see in an orange T-shirt that bears his clean-up message. His tools include a metal pincer for picking up tissue paper, plastic bags, drinks bottles, nappies and other everyday detritus and putting it into bins.

He also carries a voice recorder that sends out an appeal to restaurant customers: “To protect our environment and not to affect our kids’ healthy growing up, dear friends, please don’t throw rubbish.”

Can China sort its household waste recycling problem by 2020?

Zhong said that at first he felt afraid and self-conscious when he stood in front of a crowd of diners with his green gospel. But time and practise taught him he had almost nothing to fear, he said.

One of the bigger challenges is getting through to the many people who do not listen to him and refuse to dispose of their rubbish the right way.

“It’s normal that our society has various kinds of people and I need to face this reality,” Zhong said. “I was prepared in my mind that I would be called ‘nut’ since this is such an arduous but fruitless cause.”

He tackles the problem with his usual persistence, so argument and persuasion is all part of the job. When Zhong insists the rule breakers take their rubbish and bin it, some ignore him and others walk away – but he is ready with an answer.

“I tell them, ‘If you don’t pick it up, I guarantee that you will lose face today. I will let passers-by see and hear what a humiliating thing you have done. Everybody will then condemn you and you will be embarrassed’,” he said.

When people tell him what they do is none of his business, Zhong replies that what he is doing is in the public interest.

Sometimes there is a heavier price. Zhong said he once watched several men in their 20s throw rubbish onto the road from their car. He set off after them in his SUV. He waylaid them and asked them to clean up after themselves – the men refused, swore at him and beat him up. Their day ended in a police station.

Zhong said he hoped his work would bring “positive energy” to the employees of his vehicle components and packaging materials companies, but his mission was not about business prestige.

However, last year, he was named as one of the top 10 public welfare figures of Chongqing by the municipal government, while his family was honoured as a Chinese good family by the semi-governmental All-China Women’s Federation, a women’s rights organisation established in 1949.

Street cleaner who found US$22,000 in rubbish refuses to accept a reward

There were trials for Zhong closer to home – his wife, Yang Zuhui, did not support his mission at first and threatened to divorce him.

“It’s OK that you picked up trash on the street and you were just another cleaner there,” she told him in an interview with Hunan Television in 2017. “But what worried me was that you tried to persuade others – physical violence [against him] was inevitable.”

She also said: “My husband is not very tall and, on many occasions, he was at a disadvantage and got beaten up. I am worried about his personal safety.”

Zhong impressed his daughter’s schoolfriends with an inspiring speech. Photo: Weibo
Zhong impressed his daughter’s schoolfriends with an inspiring speech. Photo: Weibo

But two years ago, their 10-year-old daughter helped change Yang’s attitude towards her husband’s mission after a school outing.

After lunch that day, Zhong gave the adults and children who had left rubbish behind one of his lectures.

His daughter, who was embarrassed by Zhong’s speech, came to appreciate him when classmates told her: “Your father is awesome. He is like a hero who protects the Earth.”

Yang was won over because she knew her husband was a determined man and once he decided on a course of action would not change his mind.

Their son – who is in his 20s and has returned to Chongqing after studying in France – always stands by his father, Zhong said.

“My son told me that environmental voluntary work normal abroad and it is respected,” he said.

Going out to collect rubbish has become part of Zhong’s life, he said.

“In the evening, if I stay at home, my wife and daughter will ask me ‘Why don’t you go to pick up rubbish?’”

He said it was important to go litter picking every day because the more he did it the more people he could influence.

“By breaking the littering habit, Chinese people can stand tall when they travel abroad,” Zhong said.

Source: SCMP

13/06/2019

Chinese university entrance exam maths question leaves US teacher stumped

  • Chinese social media finds light relief in struggle over gaokao Question 12 in an American cafe
Video of a US middle school maths teacher trying to complete a mathematics question from a Chinese exam paper has been widely shared on Chinese social media. Photo: Weibo
Video of a US middle school maths teacher trying to complete a mathematics question from a Chinese exam paper has been widely shared on Chinese social media. Photo: Weibo
A video of a US secondary school maths teacher comically trying – and failing – to complete a mathematics question from a Chinese gaokao exam paper has been widely shared on social media in China.
The video was shared on June 8 by an unidentified Chinese teacher working in the United States. It shows her friend, a US secondary school maths teacher, trying to solve a question from this year’s gaokao, the annual Chinese college entrance examination that has a reputation for difficulty, even by international standards.
The question was taken from section II of the natural sciences mathematics exam paper on the national level, which is generally a more challenging test given to students who select the science track.

“I heard this year’s gaokao maths questions are very difficult so I searched online and tried to solve one in a cafe. But it has been a long time, so I forgot how to solve it,” the Chinese teacher told online news platform Guancha Syndicate.

At that moment, the US maths teacher was sitting next to her and playing chess with his friends, “so I asked if he could help me solve a question, but that posed a big challenge for him”, she said.

In the video, the US teacher looks confused by question 12, a multiple choice question about functions. He reads it for three minutes, then starts to analyse and explain the steps to the Chinese teacher.

He first tries the method of substitution but fails and finally chooses D by exclusion.

The US secondary school maths teacher still doesn’t know his answer was wrong. Photo: Weibo
The US secondary school maths teacher still doesn’t know his answer was wrong. Photo: Weibo

“I think it’s this one (option D), it’s matching, it’s D!,” the American teacher says confidently. Later in the video, the Chinese teacher explains, “He spent around seven to eight minutes on this question and finally chose D, so he should get it correct, shouldn’t he?”

However, the answer turned out to be B, much to the amusement of social media users. Posts about the video have been viewed 140 million times on microblogging site Weibo, and the video has been picked up by other Chinese news media.

Crunch time as gaokao exam season starts for China’s university hopefuls

Weibo users shared their views below the post, with comments such as, “Question 12 is usually the hardest one”; “these multiple choices should not take more than 50 seconds”; and “he would not be able to finish the whole paper at this speed”.

According to the Chinese teacher, her US friend still doesn’t know his answer was wrong.

“He just said the question is ‘worded really weird’ and he cannot clearly figure it out,” she said.

Source: SCMP

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