This must be the first Asian university with an overseas campus. Are there any others? But I bet it will not be the last.
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04/02/2013
* “Muslims have bigger problems than Rushdie”
Salman Rushdie (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Hindu: “Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen said here on Sunday that the Muslim groups who protested against author Salman Rushdie’s visit to the city were distracting attention from “the real disadvantages” that the community faced.
“A lot of people who are enormously disadvantaged have enormous reasons to complain about other things,” Professor Sen said in response to a question on the controversy at the Kolkata Literary Meet, one of the events in the 37 International Kolkata Book Fair.
Professor Sen said that communities such as the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and the Muslims in West Bengal were not as privileged as the rest “in terms of the even-handedness of progress.”
“To subvert that issue into a completely different kind of issue and getting offended about something else — that is distracting attention from the real disadvantages that they face,” Professor Sen said.
The author of The Argumentative Indian said the militancy seen in recent developments restricted the conversation: “Anything that makes the Indian constructive argumentative tradition more militant — that people have the right [to deem an act as offensive] and therefore you cannot say those things — becomes a limitation because it restricts the conversation,” Professor Sen said.”
via The Hindu : News / National : “Muslims have bigger problems than Rushdie”.
See also: http://chindia-alert.org/political-factors/indian-tensions/
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03/02/2013
* Number one rule of Royalty, ladies – no spitting! The woman set to cure China of its bad manners by importing a touch of British class
Mail on Sunday: “The woman who wants to cure China of its bad manners by importing a touch of British class
It is still acceptable behaviour in China to spit on the street, blow your nose in your hand, slurp your soup and unashamedly push ahead in a queue.
Hong Kong born Sara Jane Ho was brought up in London and has imported British manners to Beijing with her school of etiquette. Ms Ho charges up to £10,000 to improve manners in China’s high society.
They buy more Bentleys than the British, fill their luxury homes with more Swarovski crystal than the Swiss, and spend more on Louis Vuitton and Versace than the French or the Italians. But one precious commodity has eluded the Chinese in their extraordinary rise from peasant nation to superpower: good manners.
Officials are so exasperated by the tendency to spit, shout, slurp and push in at queues that they have taken to pleading and cajoling. It is not long since Shanghai launched a ‘Seven Nos’ campaign: no spitting, no littering, no vandalism, no damaging greenery, no jaywalking, no smoking in public places and no swearing. It was a dismal failure.
During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a squad of 1,500 supervisors was sent out to discourage fighting at bus stops. Paper bags were handed out by volunteers in uniforms emblazoned with the Chinese characters for mucus.
But when a Beijing university set up a ‘civic index’ to calculate the level of politeness, researchers concluded glumly that the city was still a long way off international norms and the index was quietly dropped.
Now, however, a school of etiquette is about to open in Beijing with classes based on the deportment of the British aristocracy – and the decorous behaviour of the Duchess of Cambridge.
Sara Jane Ho, a Hong Kong businesswoman who grew up in London, is offering lessons in being classy to an exclusive clientele for an appropriately princely sum: courses at her Institute Sarita, based in the five-star Park Hyatt Hotel in Beijing, cost from £2,000 to £10,000.
Dozens of society wives have signed up for lectures on how to use a knife and fork properly, how to peel a piece of fruit, how to greet a prospective mother-in-law, how to walk in heels and how to eat soup without slurping. High-powered bosses of Chinese state-owned companies are also hiring Sara Jane for lessons on how to conduct themselves at business meetings in Europe and America.
She says a subtle pro-British snobbery is driving the desire of wealthy Chinese to improve themselves socially: ‘There is an aura of mystery about European royalty that Chinese people can’t resist. Any aristocracy in China was wiped out, so the Chinese are fascinated by the idea of a royal dynasty that stretches back hundreds of years.’
02/02/2013
* Corrupt Shaanxi banker disappears with US$160 million
This disappearance will probably be the first of many.
China Daily Mail: “Posted by chankaiyee2 ⋅ February 2, 2013
In my post “Police uncover Shaanxi fraudster’s 41 Beijing properties; arrest 4 ‘accomplices’”, I told SCMP’s story of Gong Aiai, a small potato who was for some time deputy chief of a county bank. However such a small potato was found by police to have assets worth more than 1 billion yuan ($160.2 million).
Singtao Daily reports today police investigation of her started due to a post on the internet informing against her in early December.
Singtao says that Gong denied that she had such properties in an interview with chinanews.com, but later disappeared. There is rumour that she has fled abroad using her passport with fake identity.
Chinese media have made investigation and found that Gong had valuable properties in Xian and her hometown Shenmu County and owns two large hotels in Shenmu.
However, with all such wealth, Gong was not happy and tried a failed suicide last October due to pressure from her business. Her daughter who studied in Beijing was in poor health due to excessive dieting for weight reduction.
SCMP reports: “Police have uncovered the false documents of a business partner of Gong Aia. Gao Yiner – who owned properties with Gong in Chaoyang district – had two Beijing household registration papers, called hukou, and at least two identification cards listing different birthdays.
Gong, dubbed the ‘elder sister of property’ by mainland media, reportedly had four IDs and four hukou, three of which were from her hometown of Shenmu county, Shaanxi province.”
Ming Pao says, according to Chinese web newspaper yicai.com, the household registries in many areas are somewhat in a mess. They have not only become the places for police officers to make extra money by providing people with fake identities but also shelters for corrupt officials to hide their assets.
Some police officers have revealed that some party and government officials have two household registrations to keep two identities. They use their fake identities to own their ill-gotten assets, while there are no illegal assets under their true identities. In that way, they are not afraid of declaration of their property.
From this, we see Xi Jinping’s wisdom. As soon as he took over the reigns, he said he wanted to reform the letters and calls, reeducation through labour and household registration systems.
He has conducted a swift reform of the letters and calls system to prevent local officials from intercepting and persecuting petitioners and informers so that people dare to inform against corrupt officials.
He said that he would abolish the reeducation through labour system. If that system is really abolished by the National People’s Congress, local government and police will not be able to imprison people in labour camps without proper legal procedures.
As for the household registration system, I thought that he meant allowing migrant workers to have household registration in the cities they work. That will take a long time and no priority should be given to that reform.
However, reform of the system to prevent corrupt officials from having fake identities, and discovering such fake identities, will be vital to the success of Xi’s anti-corruption drive. Xi seems to have his own source of information, so that he decided to give priority to that reform.
Sources: chinanews.com, yicai.com, Singtao Daily, Ming Pao, SCMP”
via China: Corrupt Shaanxi banker disappears with US$160 million « China Daily Mail.
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- * Panicked property fire sale in China amid corruption fight (chindia-alert.org)
- China’s Xi says ‘no leniency’ in corruption fight (sinodaily.com)
- China Is Getting Closer To Netting A Big Fish In The Corruption Crackdown (businessinsider.com)
02/02/2013
* China’s Environmental Protection Racket
WSJ: “Beijing’s choke-inducing air – which blanketed the city for nearly a week before being cleared away by a bout of sorely-needed wind on Friday — prompted Premier Wen Jiabao to call for action to protect the environment and public health.
If the premier and his colleagues can see through the smog on the policy front, they might consider something that has been all but overshadowed by the capital’s plight: the sorry track record of the environmental watchdog in little Nantong in east China’s Jiangsu province.
The problems in Nantong are a tale of environmental protection gone seriously wrong in a country where money clearly talks. They may also be small but critical components of an increasingly toxic environment.
According to a series of newspaper reports, online versions of which appear to have vanished into the country’s not-so-thin air, more than 30 environmental and other officials from the Nantong area were implicated in a scandal that involves bribery and turning a blind eye to pollution problems. Thanks to the reporting of the Shanghai-based China Business News (in Chinese here and here), it’s now fairly clear that Nantong environmental officials were running something closer to an environmental protection racket.
The newspaper, which had been following the story since the summer of last year, reported earlier this month that the scandal had reached the highest level of the local environmental protection bureau. Contacted by the Wall Street Journal, an official with the Nantong Environmental Protection Bureau was unable to elaborate beyond the official posting on the Nantong discipline inspection committee’s website, which stated that former bureau director Lu Boxin was found guilty of accepting bribes and sentenced to 12 years in prison (in Chinese).
This brief report, posted under the banner headline of “Study the Spirit of the 18th Communist Party Congress, Promote and Deepen the Anti-corruption Campaign and the Building of Clean Government,” said that the bribes were taken on more than one occasion.”
via China’s Environmental Protection Racket – China Real Time Report – WSJ.
See also: https://chindia-alert.org/economic-factors/greening-of-china/
30/01/2013
* Panicked property fire sale in China amid corruption fight
Sydney Morning Herald: “Thousands of Chinese communist officials have been panicked into a fire sale of their illicit properties and billions of pounds have been smuggled overseas as the country’s new leaders intensify a campaign to root out corruption.
Luxurious properties are being dumped on the market in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou for anyone able to pay in cash as officials try to cover their tracks. A report by the party’s anti-corruption unit, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, said “a wave of luxury home sales began last November and has accelerated since December”.
It said the volume of deals had intensified by “a hundred times” after Xi Jinping, the incoming Chinese president, warned that corruption could kill the party and put one of the country’s most vigorous and resolute politicians, Wang Qishan, in charge of stamping out graft.
Fu Zongmo, an estate agent in Sanya, Hainan, said his colleagues had sold two houses recently for government officials. In recent years, the tropical beaches and golf courses of Sanya have attracted plenty of speculators but recently the market has stalled.”
via Panicked property fire sale in China amid corruption fight.
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27/01/2013
* Grandparents without borders
Another aspect of the on-going migrant workers issue that needs resolving by the government soon – before it blows up in their faces.
China Daily: “Migrant grandparents who leave their homes to live in the cities and take care of their children’s children are a growing demographic. Liu Zhihua highlights changes they have to face in adapting to their new lifestyles.
In villages across China, grandparents have set aside their dreams of retirement to raise children left behind by their reluctant parents, who migrate to the cities in pursuit of making more money than at home. At a totally different level up the economic pyramid, in urban households, grandparents are now migrating from their homes to take care of their grandchildren in cities hundreds and thousands of miles away – as families scatter across a rapidly transforming China. Their children need to work, and are reluctant to hire a full-time babysitter, either due to distrust of a stranger, preference for family, or financial restraints.
As a result, grandparents, especially grandmothers, shoulder the responsibility of being primary caregivers, when they could be at their leisure after retirement.
But it’s not always easy to adapt, especially at what may be a relatively advanced age.
While staying in Shanghai last year to take care of her pregnant daughter, and later, her newly born grandson, Deng Chengying, 55, felt as if she was in a prison.
Xiong Jiayi enjoys quality time with his grandmother. [Provided to China Daily]
The Jingzhou native of Hubei province doesn’t understand the Shanghai dialect, but in the community where the family lives, nearly all the elderly neighbors speak only Shanghai dialect.
Deng does have one frequent visitor, a friendly old woman who is an empty nester , but conversation is difficult because she speaks only the Shanghai dialect.
If it wasn’t for the traders in the morning market speaking Mandarin, Deng would have few opportunities to speak her native tongue with those in her community.
When her daughter and son-in-law go to work and the housework is finished, she generally stays in the apartment and plays online games.
“I’m so thrilled I just jump if I meet someone whose language I understand,” Deng once confided to her relatives at home in Jingzhou during a phone call.”
via Grandparents without borders |Society |chinadaily.com.cn.
See also:
23/01/2013
* Middle-class Chinese snap up overseas luxury
China Daily: “An increasing number of middle-class Chinese are buying luxury goods outside the Chinese mainland, with more overseas travel driving the trend, a KPMG report said on Tuesday.
Seventy-one percent of survey respondents ― middle-class mainland residents ― traveled overseas in 2012, compared with 53 percent in 2008. And 72 percent of them said they bought luxury items during such trips, with cosmetics, watches and handbags being the most popular items.
Brand recognition continues to rise as consumers become more discerning and seek experiential luxury as well as one-of-a-kind luxury brands and products. Respondents said they recognize 59 luxury brands, from 45 in survey conducted in 2010.
The report ― The Global Reach of China Luxury ― is based on a survey of 1,200 middle-class Chinese consumers in 24 cities. Market research firm TNS conducted the study.
Respondents were 20 to 44 years old, with a minimum household income of 7,500 yuan ($1,205) a month in tier-one cities and 5,500 yuan elsewhere.
Chinese consumers associate certain countries with particular products. For example, Switzerland is recognized for its luxury watches, while France scores highest for cosmetics and perfumes.”
via Middle-class Chinese snap up overseas luxury[1]|chinadaily.com.cn.
See also: http://unintend-conseq.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/corruption-curbs-crimp-luxury-market.html
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22/01/2013
* China’s Xi urges swatting of lowly flies in fight on everyday graft
Reuters: “Chinese president-in-waiting Xi Jinping on Tuesday took his campaign against corruption to the petty bureaucracy and minor infractions of lowly officials who are the bane of many Chinese people and businessmen’s everyday lives.
Xi, in comments carried by the official Xinhua news agency, said it was just as important to go after the “flies”, or lowly people, as it was to tackle the “tigers”, or top officials, in the battle against graft.
“We must uphold the fighting of tigers and flies at the same time, resolutely investigating law-breaking cases of leading officials and also earnestly resolving the unhealthy tendencies and corruption problems which happen all around people,” he said.
Bureaucrats must not be allowed to get away with skirting rules and orders from above or choosing selectively which policies to follow, added Xi.
“The style in which you work is no small matter, and if we don’t redress unhealthy tendencies and allow them to develop, it will be like putting up a wall between our party and the people, and we will lose our roots, our lifeblood and our strength,” Xi told a meeting of the party’s top anti-graft body.
Xi called for “a disciplinary, prevention and guarantee mechanism” to be set up to prevent corruption, Xinhua said, though Xi did not provide any details.
Chinese bureaucrats have long had a poor reputation for laziness, a love of excessive paperwork and minor acts of corruption which infuriate the man on the street and add to growing mistrust of the party.
Since taking over as Communist Party head in November from Hu Jintao, Xi has vowed to root out corruption no matter how high it is, warning the party’s survival is at risk if it does not take the problem seriously.”
via China’s Xi urges swatting of lowly flies in fight on everyday graft | Reuters.
See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2012/12/03/5515/
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21/01/2013
* Ex-minister blames China’s pollution mess on lack of rule of law
SCMP: “China had a chance to avoid environmental disasters some 40 to 30 years ago, the country’s first environmental protection chief has lamented amid worsening air and water pollution.
But Professor Qu Geping, who has overseen environmental policymaking since the early 1970s, said pollution had run wild as a result of unchecked economic growth under a “rule of men”, as opposed to the rule of law. Their rule imposed no checks on power and allowed governments to ignore environmental protection laws and regulations.
“I would not call the past 40 years’ efforts of environmental protection a total failure,” he said. “But I have to admit that governments have done far from enough to rein in the wild pursuit of economic growth … and failed to avoid some of the worst pollution scenarios we, as policymakers, had predicted.”
Qu, 83, was China’s first environmental protection administrator between 1987 and 1993. He then headed the National People’s Congress environment and resource committee for 10 years.
After three decades of worsening industrial pollution resulting from rapid urbanisation and industrialisation, China has accumulated huge environmental debts that will have to be paid back, Qu said.
He said recently he regretted that some of the very forward-looking strategies – emphasising a more balanced and co-ordinated approach to development and conservation, that were worked out as early as 1983 – were never put into serious practice when China was still at an early stage of industrialisation.
In 1970, premier Zhou Enlai had invited a Japanese journalist to give a lecture to senior government officials on the lessons Japan had learned from a series of heavy metal pollution scandals that killed several hundred people during a period of rapid industrialisation in the 1950s and 1960s, Qu said.
“But looking back, China fell into the same trap again,” he said. “In some cases, the problems are even worse now given the country’s huge population and the vast scale of its economy.”
via Ex-minister blames China’s pollution mess on lack of rule of law | South China Morning Post.
See also: https://chindia-alert.org/economic-factors/greening-of-china/
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