REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

Walk On The Wild Side

Birgit Nilsson "In questa reggia" from Turandot

Will the Chinese Turn Against the iPhone?

The Daily Show
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Posted by Evan Osnos

Apple’s recent troubles have reached the Stewart threshold. When “The Daily Show” did a send-up of working conditions at Foxconn, the mammoth Apple manufacturer in China, Jon Stewart pointed to the news that some Foxconn workers had staged a protest and threatened to commit suicide en masse. Judging by the audience reaction to Stewart’s “Fear Factory” bit, his recent focus on the issue is in step with a dawning American sense of ickiness about what goes into the electronics we love.

The “Daily Show” piece was part of a crescendo that has plucked longstanding questions about Apple’s supply chain from the business and tech pages and thrust them into the mainstream. The radio program “This American Life” excerpted a version of “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” in which the monologist Mike Daisey performs his impressions of boarding a plane to Shenzhen, hiring a translator, and trying find out who made his Apple products. On Sunday, the Times subjected Apple to an exercise in economic archeology, holding up the iPhone like a shard of pottery from which to reconstruct the decline and fall of American manufacturing. (In many of these cases, Apple’s traditional refusal to respond in substance does not come off well. The approach used to appear stylishly aloof; now it just looks embarrassed.)

All of this makes it especially strange to hear that Apple had to shut down sales of the iPhone earlier this month after mobs of shoppers (and scalpers) went berserk at the store in Beijing. Huh? Is this the sweatshop-equivalent of the cognitive dissonance that allows working-class conservatives in America to imagine that Newt Gingrich has their best interests at heart?

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2012/01/will-the-chinese-turn-against-the-iphone.html#ixzz1kWVVFwaS

What China's Airports Tell Us About China

I had seen photos of it before. From above it had looked like a spaceship had landed in the outskirts of Beijing and forgotten to turn off its parking lights. Photos of its interior showcased a glittering future with all-encompassing windows towering up to a snow-white mesh ceiling.

As we pulled up in our cab to Beijing Capital International Airport for the first time, I couldn’t help but be stunned. It really did exist, as airy, spacious, and beautiful as the photos had suggested. Undulating ceilings rolled high over the massive 11-million-square-foot terminal creating a sense that its piers docked with hundreds of jets stretched into infinity.

Shanghai’s Pu Dong airport is similarly monumental, with a huge parabola of a roof improbably held up by a series of delicate metal beams that shoot out from the ground. The terminal stretches on forever. Need to get into town in a hurry? Don’t worry. The airport’s magnetic levitation train will whisk you 19 miles into Shanghai in a mere seven minutes.

Sophisticated, monumental, and modern, these airports are monoliths devoted to state capitalism. All of the benefits of China’s ballistic ascent since the inception of economic liberalization are on display on the enormous facades of these buildings and the queued international jetliners encircling their peripheries. In the shadows of these buildings, all of the predictions about China’s coming domination of the world seem inevitable. The Chinese model of state-controlled capitalism suddenly seems to hold an irresistible allure.

Even as I marveled at the scale and style of the architecture, though, I quickly began to feel that something was amiss as I wandered through these airports on several occasions. It was clear that the glossy facades and sophisticated interior architecture were meant to present a dynamic, strong, and modern China to the world. It was also clear that they hadn’t gotten it quite right. The devil was in the details.

Whether you’re transiting through these airports or they are your point of entry or exit, the first thing you notice is an almost complete lack of information on how to navigate these labyrinthine structures. As I groped my way around Pu Dong airport, trying to figure out how to transfer to my next flight, there wasn’t a sign or placard anywhere describing where I was supposed to go. My wife and I had to speak with three different people before we could figure it out.

It turned out that in order for us to transfer from one international flight to another in the same exclusively international terminal, we had to go through immigrations and customs and then come back into the exact same section of the building that we had just left. In the process we ran into a few other bewildered passengers in the same quandary.

Read more: http://blogcritics.org/culture/article/what-chinas-airports-tell-us-about1/#ixzz1kWInXLMz

On Eve of Philharmonic Concert, Chinese Conductor Slugs It Out With Attacker

By DANIEL J. WAKIN

A man attacked the Chinese conductor Long Yu on Columbus Avenue a day before his Chinese New Year concert with the New York Philharmonic — punching him in the eye and running off — but not before Mr. Yu landed a few blows of his own.

In a telephone interview on Wednesday Mr. Yu, 48, said he was walking with a friend after dinner on Columbus at about 70th Street around 10:30 p.m. on Monday when a man approached and asked for a cigarette. Mr. Yu said he did not want to be bothered and waved him off. The man suddenly swung a fist and struck him in the eye, Mr. Yu said, and started to run.

The conductor said he chased the man, grabbed him and swung back. “It’s a true ‘West Side Story,’ ” Mr. Yu said, referring to the neighborhood that was the setting for the musical about rival gangs. The man eventually fled. Mr. Yu said he did not call the police because the episode was “not a big deal.”

Mr. Yu said he went to an emergency room in the middle of the night after discomfort in his eye grew. A doctor said there was a scratch on the surface of his eye, which later acquired a shiner. Mr. Yu went on to conduct the concert Tuesday night, his face swollen. “A professional is a professional,” he said.

The New York Times

Dick Tracy - Pearl Thief Grief - Cartoon Featuring Joe Jitsu

1950's Dick Tracy Cartoon featuring stereotypical Chinese,

Joe Jitsu.  Racist?

How Murdoch made a killing in China after dumping Chris Patten's book

In February 1998, Rupert Murdoch instructed his British book publisher, HarperCollins, not to publish a book by Chris (now Lord) Patten.

That fascinating bit of history, which Murdoch tried to shrug off during New Corp's takeover of Dow Jones in 2007, was retold by Patten to the Leveson inquiry on Monday.

He explained that his book about his experiences as Britain's last governor of Hong Kong contained material critical of the Chinese authorities at a time when Murdoch was hoping to expand in China.

Patten told Leveson: "Plainly, Mr Murdoch took the view that publishing a book critical of the Chinese leadership would not improve his chances, so he instructed HarperCollins to drop the book on the grounds that it was no good."

It was, said Patten, a commercial decision. And it transpired that it was a commercial success for both men.

Patten got his £50,000 advance from HarperCollins and when the book was published in America by another company it was promoted with a sticker on the front saying: "The book that Rupert Murdoch refused to publish".

So, said Patten, "it was worth tens of thousands on the sales of the book."

Read more at The Guardian

Chinese Soldiers Pass Around LIVE GRENADE In Military Training Exercise

Second Deadly Clash in China

By BRIAN SPEGELE

BEIJING—Security forces in a restive Tibetan region of China killed a second person in as many days, according to state-run media, amid intensifying riots and growing international criticism that could overshadow a landmark visit to the U.S. next month by Vice President Xi Jinping.

The state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday that police opened fire on rioters in Seda county in China's western Sichuan province on Tuesday. The county is in the Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, which has become a hot spot of Tibetan political activism and the site of protests and multiple self-immolations by Tibetans in recent months.

Xinhua quoted local police on Wednesday as saying rioters attacked a police station with stones, knives and gasoline bottles Tuesday afternoon, and that 14 police were injured. The London-based advocacy group Free Tibet said at least two Tibetans were killed in the incident and others were injured.

The accounts couldn't be verified with residents in Seda on Wednesday. Officials from the Foreign Ministry in Beijing couldn't be reached for comment. Government offices were closed for Lunar New Year celebrations.

The clash followed a similar incident on Monday in Luhuo county, also in the Ganzi autonomous prefecture. In that case, China confirmed one person was killed after a mob stormed local shops and a bank and damaged police vehicles, though officials didn't say how the person died. Free Tibet said two protesters were shot and killed in Monday's incident, among at least 36 people shot by security forces.

The violent clashes with police come as a wave of self-immolations by Tibetans puts the region on edge. At least 16 people have set themselves on fire since March in what Tibetans have described as a response to heightened government repression of Tibetan Buddhist monastic activities and an expression of growing desperation over Tibetan political and cultural autonomy. The self-immolations and clashes with security forces represent the region's worst violence since deadly riots rocked a number of locations, including the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, in 2008.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal

China, Hong Kong and Taiwan: Running Dogs, Democracy, and More

Kong Qingdong, a direct descendant of the Chinese philosopher Confucius, stands in front of a painting depicting celebrities and world leaders, including a dancing Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, at the Confucius Peace Prize ceremony in Beijing on December 9, 2011. (David Gray / Courtesy of Reuters)

Kong Qingdong has gone viral. The Peking University professor of literature and descendant of Confucius has become an overnight celebrity with his televised rant against Hong Kong. In an interview on CCTV, Kong rails against non-Mandarin speaking Hong Kongers, denounces their rule of law system, and calls them “running dogs,” a Maoist-era epithet that typified the class warfare of the 1950s and 60s. What induced this attack was a momentary interchange on a Hong Kong subway between a Hong Kong resident and a mainland woman, in which the Hong Konger told the woman that her child should not be eating on the subway.

While these two events may pass quickly into the Internet ether, what they signify will not—namely how will Hong Kong, China, and even Taiwan come to terms? By all reports, Hong Kong is being flooded by mainland tourists—a good thing if you want to keep your economy buoyant in these difficult times, not such a good thing if these “tourists” are overwhelming your public transportation, schools, hospitals, and more because those things don’t work as well where they come from. So resentment, for obvious reasons, is rising. At the same time, many in Hong Kong are concerned about their freedoms. Despite “one country, two systems,” the right to vote, freedom of expression, and the rule of law all seem perpetually at risk as a result of Beijing’s own political insecurities.

Read more at Asia Unbound

Philippines may allow greater U.S. presence in latest reaction to China’s rise

Zachary S. Welch/AP - Two decades after evicting U.S. forces from their biggest base in the Pacific, the Philippines is in talks with the Obama administration about expanding the American military presence in the island nation, the latest in a series of strategic moves aimed at China

By Craig Whitlock, Updated: Wednesday, January 25, 3:29 PM

Two decades after evicting U.S. forces from their biggest base in the Pacific, the Philippines is in talks with the Obama administration about expanding the American military presence in the island nation, the latest in a series of strategic moves aimed at China.

Although negotiations are in the early stages, officials from both governments said they are favorably inclined toward a deal. They are scheduled to intensify their discussions Thursday and Friday in Washington prior to higher-level meetings in March. If an arrangement is reached, it would follow other recent agreements to base thousands of U.S. Marines in northern Australia and station Navy warships in Singapore.

Among the options under consideration are operating Navy ships from the Philippines, deploying troops on a rotational basis and staging more frequent joint exercises. Under each of the scenarios, U.S. forces would effectively serve as guests at existing foreign bases.

The sudden rush by many in the Pacific region to embrace Washington is a direct reaction to China’s rise as a military power and its assertiveness in staking claims to disputed territories, such as the energy-rich South China Sea.

“We can point to other countries: Australia, Japan, Singapore,” said a senior Philippine official involved in the talks, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the confidentiality of the deliberations. “We’re not the only one doing this, and for good reason. We all want to see a peaceful and stable region. Nobody wants to have to face China or confront China.”

Read more at The Washington Post

Apple looks to China’s ‘staggering potential’

By Kathrin Hille in Beijing and Chris Nuttall in San Francisco

If Apple needed an illustration of its popularity in the world’s biggest smartphone market by volume, it was given one this month in Beijing.

The US group suspended sales of all iPhone models through its retail stores in China after the launch of its latest model – the 4S – at its flagship Sanlitun store in Beijing triggered a riot among black marketeers.

Such hysteria is an extreme example of the attraction of a device that drove Apple to its best quarter in its 35-year history, far outstripping analysts’ expectations. It further surprised investors with its optimism for 2012, suggesting its phenomenal growth was set to continue.

It cast aside its usual caution and forecast revenues and profits for the current quarter – $32.5bn and $8.50 per share – that for once bettered Wall Street’s predictions. Some of that optimism comes from the success it has had tapping new markets, including China.

The iPhone 4S is now in 90 countries, its fastest rollout ever – and the company now earns 58 per cent of its revenues outside the US. This means the rest of the world will come more into play and could lead growth this year.

Tim Cook, Apple chief executive, on Tuesday picked out China as having the most potential for growth. He told an analyst conference call that Apple was making some progress in Brazil, Russia and India, but China, among the Bric countries, was on a different level, with demand “staggering” and “off the charts”.

Read more at Financial Times

Chinese New Year can help Beijing sell 'brand China'

For the most heavily populated nation on earth and its rapidly spreading diaspora, elements of Chinese New Year celebrations can sometimes resemble Christmas: people travel great distances to be together, businesses shut down, cities become quiet.

Spending quality time with family and friends; exchanging the ubiquitous red packets containing freshly minted bank notes for luck; and eating and drinking are a few of the many key ingredients to celebrating the Lunar New Year.

Given the importance of the festival and the growing size of the Chinese community, this period is clearly a commercial bonanza for many Asian suppliers.

Equally, foreign brands can embrace the business opportunity by taking time to fully understand the tradition and culture of Chinese New Year - the differences from country to country, market to market - and enhance their brands' connections with consumers.

But while Asian or international brands can cash in, there is perhaps a bigger opportunity for China to enhance its position as a brand on the global stage.

Read more at BBC

Political Situation in China ‘Very Delicate’: US Ambassador

By: Ansuya Harjani
Assistant Producer, CNBC Asia-Pacific

U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke has told National Public Radio (NPR) in the U.S. that the political situation in China is “very, very delicate” and the country’s human rights record had worsened.

Getty Images

His comments followed an interview with Charlie Rose, earlier in the week, where he criticized the country’s human rights record.

On Wednesday, China’s foreign ministry reacted to Locke’s earlier comments saying it objected to interference in its internal affairs.

Frank Lavin, the former U.S. Ambassador to Singapore told CNBC.com that Locke’s comments were a little more forceful than the usual statements made by senior members of the U.S. government.

In an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep, Locke said there is growing frustration among the Chinese people over the “operations of government, corruption, lack of transparency” and he referenced China’s “Jasmine Revolution” last February, which was modeled on the pro-democracy demonstrations seen across the Middle East.

Shaun Rein, Founder & Managing Director, China Market Research Group believes the statement won’t be taken lightly and says this incident just adds to the risk of a trade war between the U.S. and China.

Read more at CNBC

Will The Chinese Regime Burn Itself Out?

It's commonly argued that China's government can only survive with rapid economic growth, but Yu Liu and Dingding Chen think [pdf] that such progress will also bring down the Communists:

It is true that the Chinese state is still very strong, with enormous fiscal, repressive, and even normative strength. But growing faster yet are the expectations of ordinary Chinese. With the memory of the Cultural Revolution fading, the benchmark of good performance is shifting. Younger Chinese are increasingly unlikely to compare their living standards with those of the revolutionary years. The opening up of China and the rapid rate of urbanization have created a new set of reference points, and people increasingly take a secure lifestyle for granted, seeing education, medical care, and decent housing as welfare entitlements.

The Daily Beast

Peter Hessler - Oracle Bones

Peter Hessler from C-SPAN on FORA.tv

Anchee Min: Pearl of China

Anchee Min: Pearl of China from Warwick's Books on FORA.tv

PEARL S. BUCK

Pinyin faux amis

We'd better get used to it; pinyin romanizations will be showing up in English with increasing regularity. For example, someone who catches a glimpse of this sign may think that it has something to do with writing instruments:

 The photograph, however, shows two bumper cars. What then, is this mysterious "Super pen pen car" that the sign is advertising? In fact, "pen pen" is incorrect pinyin for pèngpèng 碰碰 ("bump"), and a pèngpèngchē 碰碰车 is a "bumper car" ride that you can often find in Chinese amusement parks.

Many pinyin-English faux amis are humorous. For example, there's a girl named You Shiting 尤诗婷. When she came to America to study, her name was given in the usual Western order as Shiting You, which led to much merriment.

When I first went to China in 1981, I was tricked by some naughty girls who kept asking me how to pronounce fuxing 復興 ("rebirth, renaissance, resurgence") and what it meant in English. A major hotel in Beijing had to change its name from Fuxing Hotel to Beijing Hotel because tourists were reluctant to stay in it when it had the former appellation.

Some pinyin-English faux amis can be politically or ideologically inconvenient. As I wrote in the first chapter of The Columbia History of Chinese Literature (p. 54):

Some writers have begun to play with pinyin mixed in among Chinese characters. A notorious example was the 1980s spoken drama "Women" (Us), which had its title written only in pinyin "Women") and used pinyin for the first-person plural pronoun women ("we, us") throughout in some versions of the script. It is difficult to determine precisely what the authors (a collective from a military unit, no less!) meant by this usage (perhaps a subtle pun on the English word written with the same letters? — a so-called faux ami), but the government was sufficiently incensed to ban the play before it actually opened.

Other pinyin-English faux amis and related phenomena are discussed in "Flirtatious Evacuation", "YouCool", and "Transletteration".

[A tip of the hat to Jiang Ranting]

January 16, 2012 @ 3:07 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Lost in translation

Southwest path information gap, a cloister

Filed by Victor Mair under Lost in translation

Someone recently told Tom Bishop (creator of Wenlin software for learning Chinese) that Google Translate is really good now, so he tried translating this English paragraph into Chinese (chosen randomly from the cave adventure game):

You are on one side of a large, deep chasm.  A heavy white mist rising up from below obscures all view of the far side.  A southwest path leads away from the chasm into a winding corridor.

The result is:

Nín shì yīgè dà de, shēn de hónggōu de yībiān. Yīgè chénzhòng de bái wù, cóng xiàmiàn shàngshēng yǎngàile suǒyǒu de yuǎnfāng de kànfǎ. Xīnán lùjìng xìnxī hónggōu, chéngwéi yīgè huíláng. 您是一个大的，深的鸿沟的一边。一个沉重的白雾，从下面上升掩盖了所有的远方的看法。西南路径信息鸿沟，成为一个回廊。

 

And the result of converting that Chinese back to English is:

You are a big, deep side of the gap. A heavy white mist, rising from below to cover all of the distant view. Southwest path information gap, a cloister.

Converting that back into Chinese produces:

Nǐ shì yīgè dà de chājù shēn chù. Yīgè chénzhòng de bái wù, cóng xiàmiàn shàngshēng dào hángài suǒyǒu de yuǎnjǐng. Xīnán lùjìng xìnxī de chājù, huíláng. 你是一个大的差距深处。一个沉重的白雾，从下面上升到涵盖所有的远景。西南路径信息的差距，回廊。

Back to English:

You are a big gap between the depths. A heavy white mist, rising from below to cover all of the vision. Southwest path information gaps, corridors.

Read more at Language Log

A Few Anecdotes about My Hexagonal Pavilion

On its last day, let me end 2011 with a personal note.  After two laborious years, the hexagonal pavilion (六角亭) Bob and I started in September 2009 is finally finished (actually, I can only take credit for the inspiration, design and quality control; Bob is the one who built it):

To compare, here is a photo of it in the first winter:

From the beginning I racked my wits trying to come up with a good name for the pavilion. After many failed tries, the name arrived without effort. In December 2009, I emailed the above photo to a friend, Wang Yan, in China. He replied:

宋人当年每起一亭，必做文以记之，如“喜雨亭记”，“黄州快哉亭记”等，皆吾所爱。但最爱者，为苏东坡“超然台记”。

In translation:

In the Song Dynasty, whenever a pavilion was built, notes were written to record it.  I love such notes as those for "Happy Rain Pavilion," "Huangzhou Pleasure Pavilion," etc, but what I love the most is Su Dongpo's "Notes on the Terrace of Transcendence."

Terrace of Transcendence,  Shandong

I had forgotten all about it: The Terrace of Transcendence (超然台), in Shandong Province, was where the great Song Dynasty poet Su Dongpo wrote his eternal verse "Bright Moon, When Was Your Birth" (明月几时有). (Some translate the poem title as "When Will the Moon Be Bright," which is clearly incorrect to me as the poem itself indicates that it was written during a full moon.)

The word "超然," besides "transcendence," can also be translated as "detachment,", "aloof," and so on.  "Transcendence" seems to fit our mood the best and, on reflection, it must be more than coincidence that we live in the area where the 19^th century "transcendental movement" originated.  It was sitting by Walden Pond one day in 2010, for example, that Bob wrote his letter of resignation to the company where he had worked for two decades. (Later, when discussing the pavilion name, I asked him, jokingly, what we are transcending, and he said, "The chaos of office politics." In that case, I “transcended” seven years earlier than him, when I quit my job as an algorithm developer with steady income and became a writer with two sleeves of clear wind (两袖清风). :-))

Looking back, my whole life seems to be a struggle between aspiration for some sort of transcendence and failure in achieving it. No matter.  Don't you know a classic Chinese saying, "Though unreachable, my heart longs" ("虽不能至，心向往之")?

Thus we settled on the name for our pavilion:  超然亭, or "The Pavilion of Transcendence."

The last touch to complete the construction requires an engraved plaque, or 匾 (bian), with the name inscribed.  I decided to use seal script (篆字) for the inscription, and easily found an on-line generator for the three characters. But the color combination for the background and the characters was a bit difficult to figure out, even with computer simulation.  I asked around for opinions among Chinese friends, but they were as varied as our own.  Alas, one friend convinced us that "only black characters on a wooden background would match the meaning of the words."

Read more at Inside-Out China

This video is Peking University professor Kong Qing-Dong‘s commentary on “Verbal Wars on Train Hongkonger vs Mainlander” through Mainland China internet TV station TV.V1.

Mainland Chinese Televsion Hongkonger are dogs中國 電視台 香港人是狗

Mainland girl eating caused controversy within Hong Kong MTR

Liu Xiaobo’s Plea for the Human Spirit

In absentia: An image of Liu Xiaobo in Oslo during the ceremonies marking his winning of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

By JONATHAN MIRSKY

Published: December 30, 2011

“I have no enemies, and no hatred.” Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner, spoke those words on Dec. 23, 2009, just before he was sentenced to 11 years in prison for “incitement of subversion of state power.” It was his fourth jail term since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. Liu is the only Chinese citizen to win any Nobel while living in China and, as Perry Link notes in introducing a new collection of Liu’s writings, one of only five Nobel Peace Prize winners unable to appear in Oslo to receive the gold medal: “In 1935, Carl von Ossietzky was held in a Nazi prison; in 1975, Andrei Sakharov was not allowed to leave the Soviet Union; in 1983, Lech Walesa feared he would be barred from re-entering Poland if he went to Oslo; and in 1991, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest in Burma.”

In NO ENEMIES, NO HATRED: Selected Essays and Poems (Belknap/Harvard University, $29.95), the well-­translated collection edited by Link, Tienchi Martin-Liao and Liu Xia — Liu’s wife — Liu demonstrates a considerable amount of anger while retaining his Gandhian nonviolent spirit. Taken together, his essays offer the best analysis I have read of what’s wrong in the People’s Republic of China.

Liu was the prime mover (although not the originator) of Charter 08, the petition signed by several thousand Chinese who demanded an accountable government and freedoms of speech, assembly, press and religion. The petition was the main evidence the Chinese government used against Liu when it sent him to prison in 2009, but his accusers might have reached further still, through his hundreds of articles and poems, and his 17 books. Even his 1988 Ph.D. dissertation, “Aesthetics and Human Freedom,” was “a plea for liberation of the human spirit,” as Link explains in his introduction.

Liu has always been most animated by democracy. This concern underlies his essays on Taiwan, Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union, the failures and lies of the Mao era, the “miracle” of the Deng Xiaoping reforms after Mao’s death in 1976 and, perhaps most emotively, Tibet. Even while Beijing condemned the Dalai Lama as “a wolf in monk’s clothing,” Liu breathtakingly suggested in 2008 that China could solve its ethnic unrest by inviting “the Dalai Lama back to China to serve as our nation’s president. . . . Such a move would make best use of the Dalai Lama’s stature in Tibet and around the world.”

An accomplished poet, Liu pays close attention to the power of language. Noting that the party charged him with “incitement of subversion of state power,” he said this was an excellent example “of treating words as crimes, which itself is an extension into the present day of China’s antique practice called ‘literary inquisition’ ” — a practice exemplified by the 18th-century emperor Qianlong’s purge of subversive books.

Read more here

Workers claim abuse as China adds Zimbabwe to its scramble for Africa

Workers on Robert Mugabe's pet construction project say they suffer regular beatings and miserable pay and conditions

Robert Mugabe is welcomed to Beijing by the Chinese president, Hu Jintao. China plans to invest up to $10bn in Zimbabwe over the next five years, more than in any other country. Photograph: Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images

In the evening gloom the vast complex emerges into view. Beyond a high security wall, insects dance in the beam of a giant floodlight. Men are still hard at work in the skeletons of concrete tower blocks, and standing at the centre of it all is the arch of a Chinese pagoda.

Zimbabwe's national defence college is under construction within a sprawling, heavily-guarded compound whose brooding presence sends a clear message to any would-be revolutionary. Some have dubbed it the "Robert Mugabe national school of intelligence".

The construction site north of Harare has also become the lightning rod for another source of simmering resentment – Chinese labour practices.

Surrounded by a perimeter wall that runs for a kilometre through what was once farmland, the shadowy military academy is being built by a Chinese contractor whose managers are accused of meting out physical punishments, miserable conditions and meagre pay.

"The beatings happen very often," said a 28-year-old carpenter, wearing blue overalls as he made the long walk home after a 14-hour shift. "They ill-treat you and, if you make a mistake, they beat you up.

"I saw some men beaten up yesterday. A guy complained: 'You're not treating us like human beings,' and the Chinese replied: 'You should appreciate we've come to assist you.' They beat him up and he was fired." He estimated that there were about 600 Zimbabwean and 300 Chinese workers on the site. Around 50 of the Chinese were managers. Some of the Chinese have "nice homes inside" while others live in wooden shacks just outside the complex. The Zimbabweans and Chinese rarely mix, he added. "They don't speak English so we use sign language. The Chinese eat off plates, then give us the leftovers."

Read more at theguardian

China dissident-lawyer Gao jailed in far west: brother

BEIJING | Sun Jan 1, 2012 10:30pm EST

(Reuters) - Chinese authorities have jailed the prominent dissident-lawyer Gao Zhisheng in the remote far west, his brother said Monday, the first confirmation of Gao's whereabouts in nearly two years in a case that has fanned criticism about secretive detentions.

Gao has been imprisoned in the Shaya County Prison in Xinjiang region on charges of "inciting subversion of state power," his brother, Gao Zhiyi, told Reuters by telephone from his home in Shaanxi province, citing a court notice.

"Now we finally know where he is, I hope we can visit him in a few days, but it's a long way to travel," said Gao Zhiyi.

The court notice amounted to the clearest information of Gao Zhisheng's location since April 2010, when he briefly made contact with friends and foreign reporters after being held in secretive detention for more than a year.

Read more at REUTERS

Ancient villain-hitting ritual thrives in Hong Kong

Squatting at a makeshift shrine with joss sticks burning beside her, Granny Leung starts bashing a manlike paper cut-out with a pair of sandals.

An elderly woman performs a ritual beneath a bridge in the Causeway Bay district of Hong Kong in July 2011. A number of women in Hong Kong have made a successful business out of an ancient Chinese villain-hitting ritual that customers claim can drive away evil spirits.

"I beat you little people, I'm sending you away!" chants the 76-year-old woman, one of the last practitioners in Hong Kong of the ancient Chinese ritual of "da siu yan", or "beating the petty little people".

Granny Leung performs her mysterious incantations in the bustling shopping district of Causeway Bay. And business is booming.

For as little as HK$50 ($6), Leung claims she can curse her customers' enemies and reverse their bad luck by burning paper offerings and hitting paper figures with shoes.

Believers say the ritual can help to drive away evil spirits in general, or a specific nemesis such as a hated neighbour, a business competitor or a love rival.

Ada Mak, a 50-year-old businesswoman, travels from the outskirts of Hong Kong to see Leung every weekend. She believes the ritual can protect her from negative gossip, lawsuits and financial loss.

"I always feel at ease after I see Granny Leung," says Mak, adding that she usually asks the old woman to curse a general villain rather than a specific target.

Read more at Bangkok Post