Chinese Answers

On the outside, China's answer to Silicon Valley doesn't look the part: It's a crowded mass of electronics malls, fast-food joints and office buildings in northwest Beijing, bisected by congested highways.

Inside China's Version of Silicon Valley, Wall Street Journal, Dec 4, 2013.

Large parts of eastern China, including its prosperous and cosmopolitan commercial capital Shanghai, have been covered in smog over the past week or so. The provincial government has cancelled flights, closed schools and forced cars off the road – and also warned children and the elderly to stay indoors. A cold front arriving yesterday saw the pollution start to clear.

Users of Sina Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter, also vented their outrage over the CCTV and Global Times’ comments.

Positive Spin on China's Smog Crisis Baackfires, The Scotsman, 11 Dec, 2013

Over 86,000 micro-credit practitioners, China's answer to Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi banker credited with pioneering the concept of micro-finance, have been going door to door to visit small business owners and farmers to offer them financial advice and services.

Rags to Riches Tales Expected from Micro Financing Growth, Xinhua Insight, 14 Dec, 2013

China Telecom’s subsidiary Jiangsu Telecom, in Jiangsu province on the east coast of the country, posted the offer on its website. Translated details were scarce, but it appears customers have the chance to use bitcoin instead of yuan to pre-order Samsung’s 2014 clamshell form-factor Android phone.

Payments are processed through BitBill, China’s answer to BitPay.

China's Third Largest Mobile Network Now Accepts Bitcoin, Coindesk.com Nov 29, 2013.

58.com, China’s answer to Craigslist, surged nearly 42 per cent to $24.12 in its debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, in a sign that sentiment towards US-listed Chinese companies could be turning after two years of accounting scandals and critical reports from short-sellers.

China's Answer to Craiglist Surges on US Debut, FT.com, Nov 1st, 2013

 

Human Rights Blighting China's Future

Sick and tired of having do-gooders like Europe and America slamming the terrible human rights record in China, China has once again pointed out that only Chinese people can really attack the terrible human rights record in China.  If they're not already in jail for doing so that is.

Yesterday was, of course, International Human Rights Day, according to the UN General Assembly.  You'd think that with their recent appointment to the UN Human Rights Council, China would've at least started to pull their punches when it  come to be dishing out beatings to the poor folks that trek to Beijing to file petitions against corrupt officials, and other grievances they might have.  Not so, according to a retired army officer, Gao Hongyi, who went to Beijing's UN offices.

"After I got there, the place was packed with people and large numbers of police," Henan petitioner Shi Yuhong told RFA's Cantonese Service. "We were all put onto buses and taken to the holding centers," he said. "I was put on the 47th bus [to Jiujingzhuang detention center]," he said.

So everything's going well in that department, then.  Fearful that Chinese people would criticise the Chinese stance on human rights, the authorities went even further, making sure that no one at the train stations wouldn't get a chance to file their petitions, or make their opinions heard on what was supposed to be a day of building awareness about human rights violations.

They detained a few more people near the southern railway station in Beijing," said a petitioner surnamed Liu from the northeastern province of Jilin. "A lot of people are planning to head up to the UN at Liangmaqiao and the new premises of China Central Television to call for better human rights," Liu said.

"I saw a lot of police and their vehicles by the southern railway station," he added. "They treat petitioners as the enemy."

All of this is, of course, par for the course, when it comes to dealing with complaints made by the little people in China, it doesn't say much for a government which claims to have fought a revolution in the name of the rural poor.  Over the past year, censorship and suppression of protestors have increased, ranging from high profile arrests of troublemakers on Weibo to the quiet detentions of activists placed under house arrest.  Treatment of minorities in places like Xinjiang have gone from bad to worse, with arbitrary executions taking place without due process or supervision.

China treads a fine line between presenting itself as a modern, rising economy and superpower, but the actual mechanics underneath the shock and awe PR haven't changed since tanks were ordered to clear Tiananmen Square.  Despite the best efforts of the Chinese government, they just can't get away from the thuggish tactics that haven't worked in the past, and continue to blight China's future.

Related articles

• Thousands of Petitioners Arrested in Beijing on International Human Rights Day


• On Human Rights Day, I'll be thinking of my father in a Chinese prison | Ti-Anna Wang

Chinese Declare Internet Victory

If you've every wondered what your dad would sound like if he was put in charge of cleaning all the porn off the Interwebs then take a look at what Ren Xianliang had to say when his office issued forth a proclamation that the Internet is now like Disneyland, with barely a bad word to say about the CCP.

A study by an Internet opinion monitoring service under the party-owned People's Daily newspaper showed the number of posts by a sample of 100 opinion leaders declined by nearly 25 percent and were overtaken by posts from government microblog accounts.

Using his Jedi powers, Zhu Huaxin, general secretary of an Internet opinion monitoring service (such a thing does exist, apparently) weighed in, assuring us that positive energy (The Party) has regained control of the Intertubes, defeating negative powers (everyone else on planet Earth).

"The positive force on the Internet has preliminarily taken back the microphone, and the positive energy has overwhelmed the negative energy to uphold the online justice,"

The impressive statistics mean nothing, as was pointed out by a number of overseas analysts.  The mere fact that people aren't stupid enough to go public with their dissenting views means that they're being unpatriotic on more secure platforms, being driven underground and ultimately radicalised.  But then, the politicians in Beijing have already thought of that, right...?

Related articles

• China claims victory in scrubbing Internet clean


• CCTV Producer Says He Was Dismissed for Questioning Coverage