REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

No mercy

China’s restive Tibetan regions

Self-immolations continue, as do the Communist Party’s hardline policies

“THEY are suffering. They have no rights”, says a red-robed monk of his fellow Tibetan Buddhists on the other side of a snow-topped mountain in Sichuan province, in south-west China. His small monastery in Songpan county has so far been spared the worst of an intense security clampdown in Tibetan areas of Sichuan, following a series of self-immolations by Tibetan protesters, most of them monks and nuns. China calls them terrorists, and fears the suicides could spark renewed unrest across the vast plateau.

Over three years ago Tibet and Tibetan-inhabited parts of Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu and Yunnan were engulfed by the biggest wave of anti-Chinese unrest in decades. Today it is in Sichuan’s highlands that the authorities appear to be struggling most to contain simmering discontent among ethnic Tibetans. Sichuan’s two “autonomous prefectures” with large Tibetan populations are Aba (Ngawa in Tibetan) and Ganzi (Kardze), whose combined area is almost the size of Great Britain. Much of the area was once part of the famously warlike traditional Tibetan region of Kham. In 1991, China’s then Communist Party chief, Jiang Zemin, said that “to keep Tibet stable, it is first necessary to pacify Kham”. That attitude is an ancient one among China’s rulers, and still applies.

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Songpan county is perched on the north-eastern edge of Aba and has become a magnet for ethnic Han tourists from across China. But tourists are not encouraged to go deep into Aba, where police swarm in remote towns and keep restive monasteries under guard. In Aba town itself, about 150km (95 miles) away, armoured personnel carriers have been deployed on the streets.

The authorities have been trying to keep foreign journalists out of the worst-affected areas of Aba and Ganzi. They are nervous that news of the immolations and the grievances that led to them will inflame tensions among more than 1m Tibetans in the two prefectures. (The population in Tibet proper is three times larger.) The handful of journalists who have ventured beyond Songpan this year have been briskly caught and turned back. The police have recently been helped by snowfall on the mountain road from Songpan to Aba town, which is at around 3,200 metres (10,500 feet) above sea level.

Officials have reason to be fearful. For Tibetans, self-immolation is a new form of protest. Such acts are difficult for the authorities to prevent, and images of them can have a powerful psychological effect among sympathisers. Eleven Tibetans have tried to kill themselves this way since March. Six have succeeded, the latest a 35-year-old nun in Ganzi on November 3rd.

On October 19th Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, held a prayer ceremony for the dead in Dharamsala, the Indian town where he now lives in exile. China’s foreign ministry accused him of inciting “terrorism in disguise”. Fire extinguishers have become the accoutrement of choice for police patrols (see picture) as far away as Lhasa, the Tibetan capital some 1,200km south-west of Songpan.

Read more at The Economists

China's web users are powering dissent

Tens of thousands of people have responded to Ai Weiwei's internet appeal for financial support

This week has seen an extraordinary surge in support for the artist and government critic, Ai Weiwei, from people around China.

By midday on Friday, one of his staff members says, 7.57m yuan (£740,000; $1.19m) had been donated to help the artist fight his tax demand from the government.

That is over a million dollars raised in little more than a week.

Without a doubt it is the appeals for help that have gone out over the internet that are behind this.

They have been posted by Ai Weiwei and others on China's microblogs.

More than 26,000 people have come forward.

Many of them are convinced the tax demand is an attempt to silence Mr Ai and they want to show their backing for him.

Famous for helping design Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium for the Olympics, Ai Weiwei has become of the most vocal critics of the ruling Communist Party.

Before his arrest the internet was the tool that he used to spread his thoughts.

He would spend hours avidly posting on Twitter or his Chinese microblogs.

Some of Ai Weiwei's supporters sent cash in envelopes, others used paper aeroplanes to launch it over a wall into his garden

Since he was held in secret detention earlier this year, then presented with his tax demand, he has been confined to Beijing and is officially banned from giving interviews.

But he has returned to the internet and that is what has enabled Ai Weiwei to reach out to those sympathetic to him.

The numbers responding seem to have surprised even the artist himself.

China's authorities have demanded that he pay 15.22 million yuan. To fight the claim he has to put down half that sum as collateral.

Read more at BBC

China's 99% -- Why China Will Not Surpass the U.S.

The received wisdom these days is that the West is in rapid decline, and China is on an upward trajectory that cannot be stopped. Sooner or later the pundits say, the two lines will cross-- perhaps explosively-- and China will rule the world. The latest evidence? Klaus Regling heading to Beijing on Friday to beg for Chinese financial aid to rescue Europe. It is certainly a long way from the foreign treaty ports and other indignities that China suffered at European hands in the last century... I wonder if there is a Chinese word for schadenfreude?

I might have contributed modestly to the momentum theory of China's ascendancy myself with the 2003 article that David Hale and I wrote for Foreign Affairs, China Takes Off. To say that China is rising is one thing however, because that is undoubtedly true. To say that China will rule the world is quite another.

An amazing number of Americans who were polled recently incorrectly believe that China's economy is already bigger than the US. The view from inside China is somewhat different. As any thoughtful person there will attest, China faces a slew of obstacles at this stage of its development. China might be a rich state, but its people remain poor. China may become the world's largest economy in 2016 according to optimistic estimates by the IMF, but that simply means that total output will be larger than in the US. A country with 1.3 billion people should have an economy larger than one with .3 billion in absolute numbers: China's population is more than four times larger. If both economies were exactly the same size, China's GDP per capita would be just 25% compared to the US.

What this means is that in spite of the overall size of its economy, the standard of living in China is correspondingly lower. Just one example to put this into perspective: only 20% of Chinese people have flush toilets. The inescapable fact is that a world in which Chinese consume at the same rate as Americans is a world that cannot exist, based upon available resources of food, water, energy, and other commodities and products such as cars. It would require by some estimates four plant Earths. There is a natural limit to Chinese consumption simply because there are so many Chinese people. This might be unfair, but it means that the great majority of Chinese will not be able to enjoy the kind of life we live here in the US absent exponential and unforeseen technological progress.

Read more at Huffington Post

Analysis: Premium Chinese beer a bitter brew for foreign brands

By Charlie Zhu and Donny Kwok

Chinese brewers are making an aggressive push into premium beer, lured by high margins and huge growth potential, posing a tough challenge to the foreign companies that dominate the category in the world's largest beer market.

China's beer consumption, which hit 450 million hectoliters last year -- nearly twice that of the United States -- is expected to grow 5 percent per annum in the next few years, double the 2.5 percent growth forecast for the global market this year.

Premium draught beers make up only 5 percent of China's overall beer market, compared with 50 percent in developed markets such as France and Germany, and 30 percent in the United States.

Analysts expect premium beer to account for a quarter of China's annual production in five to 10 years, largely driven by rising brand awareness and lifestyle changes following the emergence of a wealthy middle class.

For Paul Sin, a Hong Kong Chinese merchant in his 60s, drinking beer is not just a matter of taste. It is also about national pride.

"We are now able to taste good beer produced by ourselves, taste the success of our economic development with our taste bud," said Sin as he sipped a Tsingtao Draft in an upscale Hong Kong restaurant.

"Our beer is now good enough to stand side by side with Heineken and Blue Girl," he said. Blue Girl is made by South Korea's Oriental Brewery Co Ltd <INTBB.UL>.

Major local brewers are likely to see their premium segment growing more rapidly than foreign brands, helped by their vast sales network, nationwide presence and cost advantage.

That could be a major threat to foreign brands such as Anheuser Busch InBev SA <ABI.BR>, which dominates the premium beer segment in China with a 45 percent share.

Tsingtao Brewery Co Ltd <0168.HK> <600600.SS> is a distant second in the segment with a 15 percent share, while Heineken NV <HEIN.AS> and Carlsberg AS <CARLb.CO> trail at 7.5 percent and 6.1 percent, respectively.

Analysts expect premium beer to account for a quarter of China's annual production in five to 10 years, largely driven by rising brand awareness and lifestyle changes following the emergence of a wealthy middle class.

For Paul Sin, a Hong Kong Chinese merchant in his 60s, drinking beer is not just a matter of taste. It is also about national pride.

"We are now able to taste good beer produced by ourselves, taste the success of our economic development with our taste bud," said Sin as he sipped a Tsingtao Draft in an upscale Hong Kong restaurant.

"Our beer is now good enough to stand side by side with Heineken and Blue Girl," he said. Blue Girl is made by South Korea's Oriental Brewery Co Ltd <INTBB.UL>.

Major local brewers are likely to see their premium segment growing more rapidly than foreign brands, helped by their vast sales network, nationwide presence and cost advantage.

That could be a major threat to foreign brands such as Anheuser Busch InBev SA <ABI.BR>, which dominates the premium beer segment in China with a 45 percent share.

Tsingtao Brewery Co Ltd <0168.HK> <600600.SS> is a distant second in the segment with a 15 percent share, while Heineken NV <HEIN.AS> and Carlsberg AS <CARLb.CO> trail at 7.5 percent and 6.1 percent, respectively.

Analysts expect premium beer to account for a quarter of China's annual production in five to 10 years, largely driven by rising brand awareness and lifestyle changes following the emergence of a wealthy middle class.

For Paul Sin, a Hong Kong Chinese merchant in his 60s, drinking beer is not just a matter of taste. It is also about national pride.

"We are now able to taste good beer produced by ourselves, taste the success of our economic development with our taste bud," said Sin as he sipped a Tsingtao Draft in an upscale Hong Kong restaurant.

"Our beer is now good enough to stand side by side with Heineken and Blue Girl," he said. Blue Girl is made by South Korea's Oriental Brewery Co Ltd <INTBB.UL>.

Major local brewers are likely to see their premium segment growing more rapidly than foreign brands, helped by their vast sales network, nationwide presence and cost advantage.

That could be a major threat to foreign brands such as Anheuser Busch InBev SA <ABI.BR>, which dominates the premium beer segment in China with a 45 percent share.

Tsingtao Brewery Co Ltd <0168.HK> <600600.SS> is a distant second in the segment with a 15 percent share, while Heineken NV <HEIN.AS> and Carlsberg AS <CARLb.CO> trail at 7.5 percent and 6.1 percent, respectively.

Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/11/03/analysis-premium-chinese-beer-bitter-

Loosening Rules, China Allows Facial and Neck Tattoos to Join Army

BEIJING — Seeking to broaden its appeal to China’s better-educated and perhaps more hip youth, the People’s Liberation Army has dropped a longtime bar to enlisting in the service: now, recruits can sport tattoos on their faces and necks.

Moreover, enlistees may be chubbier or thinner than the rules had previously allowed.

The Defense Ministry announced the changes on Wednesday, five days after China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, approved a relaxation of the rules for military service.

Recruits with facial or neck tattoos will now qualify for service if the decorations are no larger than two centimeters wide, or about 0.8 inches. The new weight rules permit a recruit to weigh as much as 25 percent more or 15 percent less than the army’s standard, as opposed to 20 and 10 percent in the past.

Read more at The New York Times

THE CHINA CONUNDRUM

Andrew Councill for The New York Times

Wenting Tang says her English wasn't strong enough to write the admissions essay for the University of Delaware, where she is now a junior in marketing. More Photos »

By TOM BARTLETT and KARIN FISCHER

Published: November 3, 2011

This article is a collaboration between The New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education, a daily source of news, opinion and commentary for professors, administrators and others interested in academe. Tom Bartlett is a senior writer at The Chronicle covering ideas and research; Karin Fischer is a senior reporter covering international education.

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Andrew Councill for The New York Times

LANGUAGE BARRIER Yisu Fan, left, was conditionally admitted to the University of Delaware until his language skills improve. Some professors say they've had to alter their teaching because of the influx of students from China. More Photos »

DOZENS of new students crowded into a lobby of the University of Delaware’s student center at the start of the school year. Many were stylishly attired in distressed jeans and bright-colored sneakers; half tapped away silently on smartphones while the rest engaged in boisterous conversations. Eavesdropping on those conversations, however, would have been difficult for an observer not fluent in Mandarin. That’s because, with the exception of one lost-looking soul from Colombia, all the students were from China.

Among them was Yisu Fan, whose flight from Shanghai had arrived six hours earlier. Too excited to sleep, he had stayed up all night waiting for orientation at the English Language Institute to begin. Like nearly all the Chinese students at Delaware, Mr. Yisu was conditionally admitted — that is, he can begin taking university classes once he successfully completes an English program. He plans to major in finance and, after graduation, to return home and work for his father’s construction company. He was wearing hip, dark-framed glasses and a dog tag around his neck with a Chinese dragon on it. He chose to attend college more than 7,000 miles from home, Mr. Yisu said, because “the Americans, their education is very good.”

That opinion is widely shared in China, which is part of the reason the number of Chinese undergraduates in the United States has tripled in just three years, to 40,000, making them the largest group of foreign students at American colleges. While other countries, like South Korea and India, have for many years sent high numbers of undergraduates to the United States, it’s the sudden and startling uptick in applicants from China that has caused a stir at universities — many of them big, public institutions with special English-language programs — that are particularly welcoming toward international students. Universities like Delaware, where the number of Chinese students has leapt to 517 this year, from 8 in 2007.

The students are mostly from China’s rapidly expanding middle class and can afford to pay full tuition, a godsend for universities that have faced sharp budget cuts in recent years. But what seems at first glance a boon for colleges and students alike is, on closer inspection, a tricky fit for both.

Colleges, eager to bolster their diversity and expand their international appeal, have rushed to recruit in China, where fierce competition for seats at Chinese universities and an aggressive admissions-agent industry feed a frenzy to land spots on American campuses. College officials and consultants say they are seeing widespread fabrication on applications, whether that means a personal essay written by an agent or an English proficiency score that doesn’t jibe with a student’s speaking ability. American colleges, new to the Chinese market, struggle to distinguish between good applicants and those who are too good to be true.

Once in the classroom, students with limited English labor to keep up with discussions. And though they’re excelling, struggling and failing at the same rate as their American counterparts, some professors say they have had to alter how they teach.

Colleges have been slow to adjust to the challenges they’ve encountered, but are beginning to try new strategies, both to better acclimate students and to deal with the application problems. The onus is on them, says Jiang Xueqin, deputy principal of Peking University High School, one of Beijing’s top schools, and director of its international division. “Are American universities unhappy? Because Chinese students and parents aren’t.”

“Nothing will change,” Mr. Jiang says, “unless American colleges make it clear to students and parents that it has to.”

WENTING TANG is quick to laugh, listens to high-energy bands like Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and OK Go, and describes herself on her Facebook page as “really really fun” and “really really serious.” Ms. Tang, a junior majoring in management and international business, speaks confident, if not flawless, English. That wasn’t always the case. When she applied to the University of Delaware, her English was, in her estimation, very poor.

Ms. Tang, who went to high school in Shanghai, didn’t exactly choose to attend Delaware, a public institution of about 21,000 students that admits about half its applicants — and counts Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. among prominent graduates. Ms. Tang’s mother wanted her to attend college in the United States, and so they visited the offices of a dozen or more agents, patiently listening to their promises and stories of success.

Read more at The New York Times

Beijing risks public backlash if it rescues Europe

 

By Nick Edwards and Benjamin Kang Lim

BEIJING | Thu Nov 3, 2011 8:11am EDT

China's people have a clear message for their government -- don't even think of saving Europe.

Ahead of a G20 summit in France on Thursday, tens of thousands of ordinary Chinese have been venting their anger online, demanding their leaders sort out China's own problems before bailing out Europe.

"Domestic pressure (on China's leaders) is huge. Ordinary people are condemning" any decision to throw Europe a lifeline, one source with ties to China's top leaders told Reuters, requesting anonymity because of political sensitivities.

European officials have asked China to put cash in a mooted special purpose investment vehicle to enhance the region's rescue fund four- to five-fold, to about 1 trillion euros.

China has given the idea a cautious response, saying it wants details first, but Europe will surely deliver the message again to Chinese President Hu Jintao at the summit, which ends on Friday.

But a large swathe of China's 1.3 billion people is poor and many believe there are far better ways to spend excess cash in the $3.2 trillion pile of foreign exchange reserves the country has amassed in its rise to manufacturing might.

High on their priority list: handouts to help lower soaring prices of basic goods, subsidies to cut the crippling cost of home ownership, more investment to support job creation and easier access to bank credit for consumers and companies alike.

"Better to save Wenzhou than Ouzhou (Europe)" the source said, referring to one of China's wealthiest cities which has been hit by a credit crunch. Dozens of bosses of small and medium enterprises in Wenzhou have gone into hiding this year after borrowing heavily from loan sharks after the government tightened bank credit to fight inflation.

Read more at REUTERS

China envoy tells Indian scribe to ‘shut up’

Map depicts Arunachal as part of Chinese territory and parts of J&K as part of the Pakistan-administered Kashmir

Iftikhar Gilani
New Delhi

TBEA Private Limited’s map depicts Arunachal as part of Chinese territory and parts of J&K as part of the Pakistan-administered Kashmir

A map of India distributed by a private Chinese firm that has just bagged a Rs 2,500 crore transformer project in Gujarat marred an India-China business function here on Wednesday night in what was touted as the beginning of a track-II process of relations between the two neighbours.

A row erupted after Chinese Ambassador Zhang Yan told an Indian journalist when he questioned the map, which depicted Arunachal Pradesh as part of the Chinese territory and parts of Jammu and Kashmir as part of the Pakistan-administered Kashmir, to “shut up”. Besides, a power-point presentation by the company showed a slide of trans-border gas pipelines with wrong Indian territories.

The event was hosted by the Confederation of Indian Industries in honour of Nur Bekri, Governor of Xinjiang province, and business leaders from the Chinese province, bordering Central Asia and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir’s Gilgit region. Xinjiang is a Muslim-dominated autonomous province. The controversy arose over a booklet distributed by the company, TBEA Private Limited. TBEA has signed an agreement with the Gujarat government to set up a factory for manufacturing transformers with an initial investment of Rs 500 crore and promises to give jobs to 2,000 Indians.

Read more at TEHELKA

China shop — II

The soldier is 178 cm tall and weighs 180 kg. He'd make mincemeat out of me. Fortunately, he's 2,200 years old and made of terracotta. He is one of the 8,000-odd famous terracotta warriors of Xian in west central China. Billed as the Eighth Wonder of the World, the terracotta army was made in 221 BC to protect the palatial tomb that Qin Shi Huang, the self-proclaimed first emperor of China, had built for himself. Qin unified the country, introduced a common script and ordered the Great Wall of China to be built to keep out the barbarians from the West. To ensure there was no challenge to his authority, he destroyed Confucian writings and had scholars executed. His was the first of the many dynastic dictatorships that China has witnessed over 2,000 years, and which continue to this day under the successors of Emperor Mao, whose enormous portrait looms over Tiananmen Square. Daily, thousands of devotees queue for hours to file past his adjacent mausoleum. Maoism has been replaced by capitalism, but the worship of absolute power still rules supreme in the Middle Kingdom, as it has done since the days of Qin Shi Huang.

Like all other public buildings and landmarks in China, Tiananmen Square is huge. Its vastness is deliberate; it represents the architecture of the intimidation of the individual by the state. It's been the same for over 2,000 years. When he was having his Great Wall built, Qin Shi Huang decreed that every family in China would have to send one of its members to work on the project. My guide in Beijing, Susie (name changed) says that for every kilometre of the Wall built, over 200 workers died. Susie mentions this number unemotionally, in the same way she says a little later that 'only about a hundred' students died in Tiananmen Square when the democracy movement was brought to an abrupt and brutal end by the mailed fist of the state. Like her 1.3 billion-plus co-citizens, Susie accepts that greatness comes at a price.

Read more at the Times of India

Anarchist Publications of the May Fourth Era

China experienced a tide of anarchist activity in the May Fourth era. Particularly in the early part of the 1920s, many young people were so inspired by anarchist political critiques and cultural and social insights that they began publishing their own radical journals. Although many of these publications lasted only an issue or two and their content was largely derivative of existing writings, they proliferated in the universities and large cities across China. Though many of these publications are lost, there have been a few attempts to document them. These journals form part of the story of anarchism's development in China and demonstrate its relevance to modern China. They tell us much about what aspects of anarchism were most attractive to Chinese intellectuals and to what extent anarchism influenced China's political climate in spite of the growing communist hegemony of the period's politics.

The May Fourth era is named for the patriotic, anti-government demonstration that took place in Beijing on the 4th of May 1919, though the time-line of the May Fourth Movement spans a half-decade on either side of the May Fourth Incident. The Movement has its beginnings in the anti-Japanese indignation sparked by the September 1914 seizure of Qingdao in Shandong province, which was then a German possession, as well as the New Culture Movement among the literati, generally described as beginning with the founding of New Youth by Chen Duxiu a year later. By 1919 the explosive potential of these two trends was realized. On May Fourth, student demonstrators representing nearly all universities in Beijing took to the streets with a message. Their rallying cries included nationalist slogans revolving around some form of “Save the Nation!”, often paired with more broadly anti-imperialist slogans such as “Self-Determination!” and “Oppose Power Politics!” At the time, these two tendencies – the nationalist and the anti-Imperialist – found common ground in opposing the Republican government, though their collusion has resulted in a certain undecidability about the May Fourth that continues to this day. The pervasive radicalism of the period, however, is certain.

The Qing Dynasty had fallen in 1911 and was succeeded by the supposedly modern and democratic Republic of China under the leadership of president Yüan Shikai. The early years of the Republic were tumultuous and by 1919 China as a nation was confronted with a number of concrete problems. Not only had the country witnessed the decline of the Imperial System which had ostensibly maintained order and stability for millennia, but the powers which replaced it yielded to Japanese aggression and dissolved into warlordism on the periphery of the territory. For the intellectuals there was an added crisis, traditional philosophical traditions, namely Confucianism, appeared bankrupt in the face of early 20th century's global modernity as alternative forms of Western philosophy such as socialism and liberalism appeared to offer the only practical solutions to the nation's problems.

This profound sense of alienation was felt by a generation of young intellectuals. The decline of the Qing dynasty also spelled the decline in the traditional examination system, by which intellectuals would be assigned their governmental jobs. Losing faith in political solutions to the country's problems, they shifted their attention to the social realm where anarchists had been agitating since before the fall of the Qing. One quote from a Peking University student from around 1917 is revealing: "We had nothing to do with our government, that we knew very well, and at the same time we could no longer depend upon the principle of any so-called great leader like Woodrow Wilson...." The failures of the Versailles Peace Treaty were linked to the futility of World War I in the minds of most Chinese. Further elaborated, this ubiquitous skepticism of imperial benevolence highlighted the bankruptcy of modern democratic diplomacy. The fact that the May Fourth Incident was ignited by widespread dissatisfaction with the results of official diplomacy also means that there was a degree of resistance to governmental solutions. The failures of government oversight, both foreign and domestic, correlated to an increase of interest in anarchism in this time period. The rise of anarchism was concurrent with the general elaboration in Chinese people's minds of what the May Fourth Movement stood for.

The ideas of the May Fourth Movement, then, were not seen as purely intellectual pursuits, they were the evidence of a large-scale search for solutions to national problems; it was an atmosphere conducive to anarchist activity. Though the May Fourth Movement was essentially nationalistic, it was also receptive to anarchism and shared many thematic qualities with it. Anarchism's theoretical inquisitiveness and perceived practical victories in education, labor organizing, and the Russian revolution formed the basis for its appeal. One of the most popular campaigns of the New Culture Movement, for example, was the reorganization of Peking University under the libertarian educator, Cai Yuanpei. Cai, who accepted the chancellorship of the university in late 1916, was receptive to anarchist ideas and held many of the leading anarchists such as Li Shizeng, Wang Jingwei, Wu Zhihui, and Huang Lingshuang as close colleagues. Thus, the liberal Hu Shi's declaration of “less talk about isms, more talk about problems” seemed, as “China's first Marxist,” Li Dazhao, argued, out of touch with what most people thought about the practical applicability of new ideas to the Chinese situation.

Read more at Institute For Anarchist Studies

Selected Stories of Lu Hsun

SOAP

With her back to the north window in the slanting sunlight, Ssu-min's wife with her eight-year-old daughter, Hsiu-erh, was pasting paper money for the dead when she heard the slow, heavy footsteps of someone in cloth shoes and knew her husband was back. Paying no attention, she simply went on pasting coins. But the tread of cloth shoes drew nearer and nearer, till it finally stopped beside her. Then she could not help looking up to see Ssu-min before her, bunching his shoulders and stooping forward to fumble desperately under his cloth jacket in the inner pocket of his long gown.

By dint of twisting and turning at last he extracted his hand with a small oblong package in it, which he handed to his wife. As she took it, she smelt an indefinable fragrance rather reminiscent of olive. On the green paper wrapper was a bright golden seal with a network of tiny designs. Hsiu-erh bounded forward to seize this and look at it, but her mother promptly pushed her aside.

"Been shopping? . . ." she asked as she looked at it.

"Er--yes." He stared at the package in her hand.

The green paper wrapper was opened. Inside was a layer of very thin paper, also sunflower-green, and nor till this was unwrapped was the object itself exposed--glossy and hard, besides being sunflower-green, with another network of fine designs on it. The thin paper was a cream colour, it appeared. The indefinable fragrance rather reminiscent of olive was stronger now.

"My, this is really good soap!"

She held the soap to her nose as gingerly as if it were a child, and sniffed at it as she spoke.

"Er--yes. Just use this in future. . . ."

As he spoke, she noticed him eyeing her neck, and felt herself flushing up to her cheekbones. Sometimes when she rubbed her neck, especially behind the ears, her fingers detected a roughness; and though she knew this was the accumulated dirt of many years, she had never given it much thought. Now, under his scrutiny, she could not help blushing as she looked at this green, foreign soap with the curious scent, and this blush spread right to the tips of her ears. She mentally resolved to have a thorough wash with this soap after supper.

"There are places you can't wash clean just with honey locust pods," she muttered to herself.

"Ma, can I have this?" As Hsiu-erh reached out for the sunflower-green paper, Chao-erh, the younger daughter who had been playing outside, came running in too. Mrs. Ssu-min promptly pushed them both aside, folded the thin paper in place, wrapped the green paper round it as before, then leaned over to put it on the highest shelf of the wash-stand. After one final glance, she turned back to her paper coins.

"Hsueh-cheng!" Ssu-min seemed to have remembered something. He gave a long-drawn-out shout, sitting down on a high-backed chair opposite his wife.

"Hsueh-cheng!" she helped him call.

She stopped pasting coins to listen, but not a sound could she hear. When she saw him with upturned head waiting so impatiently, she felt quite apologetic.

"Hsueh-cheng!" she called shrilly at the top of her voice.

This call proved effective, for they heard the tramp of leather shoes draw near, and Hsueh-cheng stood before her. He was in shirt sleeves, his plump round face shiny with perspiration.

"What were you doing?" she asked disapprovingly. "Why didn't you hear your father call?"

"I was practising Hexagram Boxing. . . ." He turned at once to his father and straightened up, looking at him as if to ask what he wanted.

"Hsueh-cheng, I want to ask you the meaning of o-du-fu."

"O-du-fu? . . . Isn't it a very fierce woman?"

"What nonsense! The idea!" Ssu-min was suddenly furious. "Am I a woman, pray?"

Hsueh-cheng recoiled two steps, and stood straighter than ever. Though his father's gait sometimes reminded him of the way old men walked in Peking opera, he had never considered Ssu-min as a woman. His answer, he saw now, had been a great mistake.

"As if I didn't know o-du-fu means a very fierce woman. Would I have to ask you that?--This isn't Chinese, it's foreign devils' language, I'm telling you. What does it mean, do you know?"

"I . . . I don't know." Hsueh-cheng felt even more uneasy.

Read mre at Selected Stories Lu Hsun

Quiet Night Thoughts by Li Bai

 

 

Quiet Night Thoughts by Li Bai

The moonlight glistens in front of my bed.

I thought it was the frost on the ground.

I lift my gaze to view the shimmering moon,

Then lower my head, and miss my homeland.

 

About the Poet

Li Bai (701 - 762 AD) is one of China’s most famous poets. He lived during China’s golden age of poetry. He traveled widely and met many scholars and even briefly became an official poet for the emperor.

Li Bai’s poems are widely recited in China. Even today, children as young as 3 years old learn to say them.  -Adele

BleesedKids

A Survey of Li Yang Crazy English

I haven't heard any thing of Li Yang in a couple of years.  Now, the spotlight is on him once again due to his abuse of his wife and children. Quite some time ago, I read a paper by Amber R. Woodward, about Li Yang.  Her thoughts were quite interesting and deserve, I think, to be revisited.  A fascinating work.

Assuming you have read or will read her paper,  you will come away with a different opinion of Li Wang, and though spousal abuse is never mentioned (I don't know if he was married than or not), you will undertand that with his success came a god-like persona. An all powerfull, all consumptive power that seperates him from other men.

Nationalism is thrown in to keep the government off his back.  Smart move.

If you have never read Ms. Woodward's paper, than you are in for an amazing adventure about one of the most wealthy (and powerful?) men in China.  Enjoy.

 

A Survey of Li Yang Crazy English 

Amber R. Woodward

Victor H. Mair, Editor
Sino-Platonic Papers
Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305 USA
vmair@sas.upenn.edu
www.sino-platonic.org

Preface
English is the world’s current lingua franca. Nations without English as a native
language push to promote English as a second language (ESL) in their schools and
workplaces in order to compete with economic and diplomatic demands. In China, the
ESL movement has boomed over the last decade. According to the Web site of China’s
official news agency, Xinhua, in 2001 the ESL industry in Beijing reaped 700 million
yuan (US$84.68 million) in profits. Some Chinese ESL programs, such as the New
Oriental Language School, are well known and well trusted for their traditional
approaches to English oral studies. Others, like Beijing’s Eastern English Services, the
Wall Street English School, and Shanghai’s Talk ’da Talk are rising stars, hoping to
obtain a slice of the profits from the ESL mania in China. Of the many ESL outlets, one
of the most controversial, unorthodox, and popular is a language-learning methodology
known as Li Yang Crazy English. I learned of Li Yang and his Crazy English from Dr.
Victor H. Mair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the
University of Pennsylvania, who suggested that I study this multifaceted and relatively
untouched subject.
When I began researching this topic in 2005, only a few articles provided
information on the phenomenon. The most reliable were written by Anthony Spaeth of
Time Asia and Sophie Loras of City Weekend Beijing, who introduced Li Yang and his
Crazy English to the Western world. Since then, more articles have been published, but
all contain the same general information, the same quotations, and the same light-hearted
speculations. Through my research in America and China over the past two and a half
years, I have critically examined the claims made by reporters and bloggers regarding Li
Yang and his Crazy English, in an attempt to go beyond such surface evaluations.1 I
researched literature, conducted interviews, distributed surveys, examined Li Yang CrazEnglish products and similar pirated products, attended a Crazy English lecture, and analyzed Crazy English video footage and photographs from various sources. Li Yang’s political ideology and his Crazy English method raise many questions. The concrete gains made through Li Yang’s pedagogical and psychological techniques
are dubious. But the most significant question—one that this paper hopes to answer—
regards Li Yang’s professional status. It is the question with which I ended my first paper
on this subject: “Is Li Yang an enthusiastic teacher or a motivational speaker? Is he a
performer, a salesman, or a crook? Most importantly, is he a simple patriot or the future
leader of a world-shaking revolution?”

 

Abstract
There is a new cultural phenomenon sweeping China, and, although little Western
attention has been paid to its potential social and political implications, it is quite
significant. The name of the game is Crazy English and its purveyor is Chinese superstar
Li Yang. Droves of Chinese citizens are buying into Li Yang’s program to help China
rise to a position of global power by improving their spoken English. Li tells his
audiences that English is the international language of commerce and foreign affairs, so
let’s master it and spread the word of the greatness of Chinese culture!
Li Yang utilizes a highly unconventional method of language learning. Developed
by Li to combat his own failures in college English courses, his method involves shouting
random English phrases at the top of one’s voice at rapid speed while waving one’s hands
and arms in patterns that supposedly reflect proper pronunciation. Li believes that this
method is instrumental in breaking down a common barrier to language learning for
Chinese students, namely, the fear of “losing face.” The fear of losing face is a
widespread obstacle to language learning in China because many students are so worried
about making oral mistakes in front of others, especially native English speakers, that
they give up speaking altogether. A major reason for this problem is that English classes
in China tend to focus on reading and writing, rather than speaking. This results in
Chinese students potentially mastering English grammar, but with acquiring limited
proficiency in pronunciation and verbal fluidity. Li Yang Crazy English seeks to bridge
this educational gap by focusing on speech. By forcing students out of their comfort zone
when practicing their spoken English, Li hopes that they will gain the confidence to
approach native English speakers and strike up a conversation.
Li Yang promotes the Crazy English method in mass lectures that he presents
across the country. Some compare the lectures to rock concerts, wherein thousands of
people congregate in large school auditoriums or open public spaces to watch Li
‘perform’ English on stage.2 During the lectures, the audience is actively engaged in Liprogram, reciting his English slogans and madly waving their limbs in imitation. They
clap their hands and stamp their feet to rap or techno music while shouting phrases such
as “Mike likes to write by the bright light at night.” These touring lectures, which can
bring in 20,000 to 30,000 spectators for a single event, and the Li Yang Crazy English
products (tapes, videos, computer programs, and books) are the revenue drivers for Crazy
English promotion. The products are hot sellers, as are the pirated materials sold by
establishments with names like “Crack English” and “No. 1 English Crazy.”
While Li Yang’s methodology for learning English merits further examination (is
it innovative or deceiving?), there is another feature of Crazy English that disrupts the
innocent façade of a fun-and-games language-learning program. As is evident in Chinese
independent director Zhang Yuan’s documentary of Li Yang, also called Crazy English,
Li uses his lectures, products, interviews, and even television appearances as
opportunities to promote his personal political opinions. His ideology is blatantly racist
and chauvinistic; he is anti-American, anti-European, and, especially, anti-Japanese. He
hopes that the Chinese will use English to “defeat their enemies” (through the economy,
of course) and elevate China to its former position as leading world power. He teaches
elementary school children about the Japanese invasions of China because he wants them
to remember the atrocities of the past and use that as motivational fuel for nationalist
visions. This underlying motivation for improving the country’s English skills, namely,
that of helping China rise to a position of global dominance, is a scary facet of an
otherwise popular and entertaining language-learning program. So far, the Chinese
government approves of Li Yang Crazy English, allowing its mass gatherings in sacred
places such as the Forbidden City, while withholding permission from other groups. Li’s
political ideology is a primary cause for this official approval and may have been a
preemptive strategy developed by Li’s Stone Cliz3 company to attract such acceptance.
While there is no definitive evidence that the Li Yang Crazy English movement will
ultimately suffer the fate of other movements in China, such as Falun Gong, its progress
and increasing following warrant critical attention.

Read paper at SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS

 

Crazy English at HUSE

Li Yang’s Model: Questions of Morality

“I can do it!
I will do it!
I must do it!
I will succeed!”

In July of this year 120 university students each took their turn to shout these determined and triumphant exclamations as loudly as they possibly could. Each young adult stood up on stage, some grabbing the microphone to further amplify their determination, some exuding their confidence through hand gestures, well-timed foot stomping and theatrical gazes towards the heavens, whilst a few sank into timidity, hollowly parroting the words from memory. The latter would fail, for this was a test. It was a key part of the final assessment of students at one of Kunming’s two Li Yang Crazy English (李阳疯狂英语) summer camps, where, at the end of July this year, I worked as the resident waijiao (外教). The 120 students had migrated to the First High School of Guangdu district (官渡区第一中学), on the outskirts of Kunming, from across Yunnan province, with the ambition both to perfect their spoken English and to reshape themselves into Li Yang’s model of the confident, successful, English-speaking citizen of modern China.

Li Yang at work.

The phenomenon of Li Yang Crazy English swept China in the early 1990s and continues to this day. Li Yang, a self-proclaimed success story, has wowed student audiences from PLA soldiers to the Beijing Olympic work force to primary school children with his extravagant and unique performance-classes. He has become famed for his high-energy, high-stamina performances, which can last six or more hours. In such ‘classes’ he encourages students to shout at the top of their voices and make synchronised hand gestures corresponding to English vowel sounds. His teaching method is novel and his showmanship impressive, but what makes Li’s performances even more striking is that his audiences commonly number in the thousands, occupying, and often exceeding, the capacity of large stadiums.

Images of thousands of students shouting in unison, mimicking Li Yang’s movie-like American vowels and his toying with pace and emphasis, called the Crazy English phenomenon to the attention of writers both within and without China. Evan Osnos has noted the influential writer, Wang Shuo (王朔), described Li Yang’s populism and personality cult as “a kind of old witchcraft”; one of whipping a crowd into a frenzy and gifting them, as a collective and as individuals, a sense of power and potential. The fear of Li Yang’s cult status reached a sharp peak in 2007, when a photo, reportedly, showing 3,000 students in Inner Mongolia kowtowing to Li Yang appeared on his blog, sparking much condemnation from both mainland and Hong Kong newspapers. Li Yang, wisely, dampened his public profile for some months, patiently waiting for the furore to burn out. Within the last month, a new scandal, which Li Yang is struggling to deal with, has unfolded in China’s blogosphere and newspapers—the accusation from his wife of domestic violence against both her and their two daughters.

After China Abuse Scandal, Celebrity Teacher’s American Wife Files for Divorce

Associated Press Li Yang, creator of Crazy English, speaks at a middle school in Chengdu, southwestern China’s Sichuan province Wednesday, March 26, 2008.

The American wife of China’s most famous English teacher has filed for divorce after a months-long public battle between the two that ignited a rare public debate in the country around domestic violence.

Kim Lee, wife of “Crazy English” founder Li Yang, filed for divorce with the Beijing Chaoyang District Court, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported Thursday, citing the court.

Ms. Lee had posted a message earlier this week on her account on China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo microbl

The American wife of China’s most famous English teacher has filed for divorce after a months-long public battle between the two that ignited a rare public debate in the country around domestic violence.

Kim Lee, wife of “Crazy English” founder Li Yang, filed for divorce with the Beijing Chaoyang District Court, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported Thursday, citing the court.

Ms. Lee had posted a message earlier this week on her account on China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblogging service announcing that she was headed to divorce court. “Happiness will find me. I will leave the past behind me. Today my life begins,” she wrote, attaching a picture of a pair rings laid on top of a “Memorandum of Reconciliation” apparently written by Mr. Li on Sept. 9 in which he vowed never again to use violence against his wife.

Read more ChinaRealTimeReport

Social Trust in a Society Developing At Breakneck Speed

Chen Xianmei, the 19th person at the scene

The recent news about the tragic death of Yueyue, the young toddler who was run over by a car, and whose injuries weren’t enough to warrant the assistance of 18 bystanders, has become a hot topic in China. Behind all the headlines and various media outlets trying to come to terms with the incident, I see a deeper issue here which have been brewing ever since the reforms were instituted in the early 1980s, and that is the lack of social trust.

In a recent statement by the party secretary of Guangdong, Wang Yang, the dark side of the reforms itself are at stake. In translation:

“This incident is is the negligence of 18 people, not just one or two, and the problems it reflects are general and have been inherent for a long time in our work.”

The reason I’m quoting Wang Yang here is not so much that his quotes have been reprinted elsewhere, but that he has shown several examples of independent thinking and innovation in how to carry out reform before. Being the leader of one of the powerhouses of Chinese development, he knows more than most people the danger of unbridled economic growth without social reform.

When China’s social and political issues are discussed in the foreign media, it is often from a point of view where the main issue is whether the Communist Party is going to continue to rule, or the social contradictions are of the kind that will lead to revolution. Very rarely are the discussions focusing on what it is like to live in a society without these extreme reactions, but where ordinary people somehow have to accept the effects of fast-paced growth and social inequality for a prolonged period of time. Simply put, if too many people just want to make a quick buck without consideration for others, you get bad food safety, numerous rip-offs, corruption in the medical system, low-quality goods and various other problems. In the same way, local media focus mostly on the surface effects but not on the root cause behind most of them.

Read more at Pacific Rim Shots

The Unspeakable Bi

By Eric Abrahamsen, published October 31, 2007, 11:06p.m.

The idea of ‘untranslatable words’ is very nice. It’s a token of value; it adds a touch of solemn mystery to the work of translation, which otherwise consists mostly of nose-scratching, window-staring, and finding something to weight the book down with. But look, you see? We also have an ineffable something; a tragic ideal; we’re not simply pulling a plow.

Sometimes I think there’s actually such a thing as an untranslatable word, sometimes I don’t. On a good day it seems that any word or phrase could be rendered into English with enough care, even if the word itself vanished and were detectable only through a subtle ruffling of the surrounding text.

But on a bad day, I'm trying to translate níubī.

On the face of it, niubi is not untranslatable at all: the characters niu and bi can be rendered into English with great precision by the words – and I beg your pardon – ‘cow pussy’, niu being the zoological reference, bi the anatomical. But though the denotation of niubi is embarrassingly plain, it’s connotations are far from obvious.

Niubi is a term of approbation, perhaps the greatest such term in colloquial Chinese. Niubi is an attitude, a lifestyle: a complete lack of concern over what other people think of you, and the resulting freedom to do whatever you please. It is knowing exactly what you’re capable of, making the decision to act, and to hell with the consequences. It is the essence of ‘cool’, but taken to the nth degree, and with a dirty word thrown in.

Of course, like all great philosophical concepts, niubi has an inverse side – an excess of niubi leads to self-importance, arrogance, hubris, imperiousness, and very dangerous driving. The key difference between positive and negative niubi is that in the former, you have the ability (本事, běnshì) to back your attitude up, while in the latter you don’t. Thus the derivatives bīyàng (the appearance of a bi), and zhuāngbī (pretending to be bi – in northeastern China this will start a fight). The line between positive and negative blurs when it comes to people in positions of power, who assume they are justified in a certain measure of niubi.

Some examples:

1. A friend had a high-school classmate who spent every physics class staring at the ceiling, either asleep or completely indifferent. No matter how angry the teacher got the classmate never did the least bit of work, and his attention always remained fixed on the ceiling. When the semester was over and the test results came out, the classmate scored nearly 100%. The classmate was niubi.
2. During the furor surrounding the Chongqing nailhouse case, the residents of the nailhouse were almost uniformly described as niubi. Their decision to stay in their home while everything around them was flattened is a perfect example of ‘are they crazy or just incredibly brave?’ – the essence of niubi.
3. On an international flight out of China, a well-fed Chinese man with a crew cut was speaking very loudly to his companion (this was well after midnight). When a flight attendant came by to say that another passenger had complained, the man sat up and craned his head, saying “Eeeh? Who’s being niubi? A foreigner or Chinese?” Whereupon he gave the flight attendant his name-card and explained a bit about how important he was. From which we can infer that accusing someone of being niubi often results in being labeled niubi yourself. This is worth pondering.
4. When my wife tells a joke and I respond with nothing but a cool stare, I am being niubi.

Niubi is not used in polite society, though niu by itself means the same thing and is fit for public consumption, even appearing in newspaper headlines. As blithely as under-30 Chinese throw the term around, a little decorum remains when it comes to the written characters. Few Chinese can bring themselves to write the proper character for bi, composed of the symbols for ‘body’ and ‘cave’, and instead use a homophonous character (usually 逼) or even the letter B. The only place I’ve ever seen the real thing (besides written by fingertip in window condensation) is in the dictionary – the FLTRP Chinese-English Dictionary, for instance, hurries by with a two-word definition. I’d be hard-put to write it even if I wanted to – as I type this, my computer’s Chinese input program suggests 57 different characters with the pronunciation bi – that of the cow is not among them.

Niubi is hard to translate not because its meaning is so obtuse, but because of the way it’s used. It is uttered under the breath in a moment of awe, or it culminates a long, obscenity-laced rant. It stands out by itself as a self-contained statement of respect, and is thus difficult to weave into the surrounding text. There’s simply no good way to replicate its concise punch in English. It usually appears as ‘awesome’ (or ‘fucking awesome’, to reproduce bi’s edge), but the problem is that ‘awesome’ is an empty adjective – it begs the question – whereas niubi is simply all you need to say.

One of these days I’ll climb up on a mountain ledge and fast until the proper English translation comes to me. Until then, I will be far from niubi myself.

Read the replies at The Paper Republic

H/T to The Peking Duck

Deng Xiaoping:Founding Father of China's Economic Rise

New American Foundation

Freedom and Human Rights in China

China has found itself under increasing international pressure from several directions to improve its human rights record. Communist Party security officials appear to be expanding the use of extended home confinement, abductions and in some cases assault or torture against a broadening array of perceived enemies, according to rights advocates and legal experts, though Chinese authorities deny the existence of such measures.

One group, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, logged more than 3,500 cases of arbitrary detention in 2010, a category that includes people held in so-called black jails — extrajudicial holding pens — or in psychiatric hospitals. As upheaval swept the Arab world, toppling regimes in Tunisia and Egypt in early 2011, the Chinese government strengthened its elaborate security apparatus with crackdowns on human rights lawyers and activists.  

In China calls for change have so far been met with political controls wielded by authorities who, even during a period of rising prosperity and national pride, have not taken their staying power for granted.

Activists, possibly from outside China, have called on citizens in China to express their displeasure at the country’s lack of reforms and officials’ corruption by silently meeting in front of department stores or other public areas for a “Jasmine Revolution,” a name borrowed from the Tunisian revolt that set off the Middle East unrest. Attempts to rally have been met by overwhelming police repression and arrests.

The nearly instantaneous deployment of the police to prevent gatherings in big cities is just one example of what Chinese officials call “stability maintenance.” This refers to a raft of policies and practices refined after “color revolutions” abroad and, at home, tens of thousands of demonstrations by workers and peasants, ethnic unrest, and the spread of mobile communications and broadband networking.

Read more at The New York Times

Lead Poisoning in China: The Hidden Scourge

Sun Guotai, 5, was among children living close to a battery factory in Mengxi Village, China, found to have high blood lead levels.  By SHARON LaFRANIERE  Published: June 15, 2011

MENGXI VILLAGE, China — On a chilly evening early last month, a mob of more than 200 people gathered in this tiny eastern China village at the entrance to the Zhejiang Haijiu Battery Factory, a maker of lead-acid batteries for motorcycles and electric bikes. They shouldered through an outer brick wall, swept into the factory office and, in an outpouring of pure fury, smashed the cabinets, desks and computers inside.

News had spread that workers and villagers had been poisoned by lead emissions from the factory, which had operated for six years despite flagrant environmental violations. But the truth was even worse: 233 adults and 99 children were ultimately found to have concentrations of lead in their blood, up to seven times the level deemed safe by the Chinese government.

One of them was 3-year-old Han Tiantian, who lived just across the road from the plant. Her father, Han Zongyuan, a factory worker, said he learned in March that she had absorbed enough lead to irreversibly diminish her intellectual capacity and harm her nervous system.

“At the moment I heard the doctor say that, my heart was shattered,” Mr. Han said in an interview last week. “We wanted this child to have everything. That’s why we worked this hard. That’s why we poisoned ourselves at this factory. Now it turns out the child is poisoned too. I have no words to describe how I feel.”

Read more at The New York Times

China orders Ai Weiwei to pay $2.4 million for "tax evasion"

By Sui-Lee Wee

BEIJING | Tue Nov 1, 2011 1:52am EDT

(Reuters) - China has ordered dissident artist Ai Weiwei to pay 15 million yuan ($2.4 million) in back taxes and fines allegedly due from the company he works for, Ai said on Tuesday, a case supporters said was part of Beijing's efforts to muzzle government critics.

The 54-year-old artist, famous for his work on the "Bird's Nest" Olympic Stadium in Beijing, was detained without charge for 81 days this year in a move that drew criticism from Western governments. He was released in late June.

Ai told Reuters he received the notice from the tax authorities that described his title as the "actual controller" for Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd., which has helped produce Ai's internationally renowned art and designs.

The company is owned by his wife, Lu Qing, who is the firm's legal representative.

"They made up this new title," Ai said. "I'm a designer for the company. I'm not a director, or even a manager. Of course, I know this matter is targeted at me.

"They said: 'We're fining the company, not you.' But I said: 'Why was my name singled out by the government, at the foreign ministry briefings?' But they still said to me: 'This has nothing to do with you.'"

Rights activists said the charges were a pretext for silencing the artist who has been a fierce government critic.

"It appears that the government is set to destroy him, if not economically then at least by setting up the stage to later arrest him for failing to pay back taxes," said Songlian Wang, research coordinator for Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

Read more at REUTERS

Girl dies after outrageous hit-and-run

Beijing - A 2-year-old Chinese girl run over by two different vehicles and ignored by passersby has died, local media reported on Friday, in a case which ignited public uproar over what some called the immorality of modern society.

The hospital's "all-out efforts were ineffective" at saving Wang Yue, the China News Service cited a local news website as saying. She died in the early hours of Friday more than a week after the accident.

Both drivers who ran over the girl have been arrested, but internet users have flooded microblogs decrying the apathy of the people who left her for dead, after brutally graphic footage from a security camera of the incident went viral.

Surveillance video from the October 13 hit-and-run and later aired by a television station shows the girl run over by a van, which drives off, leaving her to bleed on a narrow street in Foshan city in the southern province of Guangdong.

Read more at  News24

CHINA: Thirteen sailors killed by drug traffickers on Mekong River

REPORTING FROM BEIJING -– Thirteen Chinese sailors who were aboard two boats captured by drug traffickers on the Mekong River near Thailand have been confirmed dead, the New China News Agency reported Monday, citing Thai investigators.

Investigators found three bodies on Friday, nine more on Saturday and the final one on Monday. Grisly photographs circulated on Chinese websites on Monday. Most of the victims were blindfolded, had their hands bound and had been killed by gunshot wounds. One Chinese sailor is still missing.

The 13 victims are believed to be crew members of two Chinese cargo ships that were hijacked last week. The boats were recaptured after a gun battle with Thai security forces. Over 900,000 methamphetamine pills were found on the two boats.

"We urge the countries concerned to quickly establish the truth about the incident, capture the criminals, and protect the safety of the Mekong River,'' Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told reporters in Beijing on Monday.

Thai army officials said they believe the ships' crews refused to pay protection money to a local drug lord and were summarily slain.

China's Foreign Minise ships and crews in the Mekong River."

China is increasingly expanding its economic reach into developing countries in Asia and Africa and is under mounting pressure to ensure the safety of its citizens overseas.

In February, China evacuated 30,000 workers from Libya. The evacuees' stories subsequently became the focus of a state media blitz to highlight China’s commitment to protecting people overseas.

The Los Angeles Times

China human rights activists beaten for trying to visit Chen Guangcheng

In China, human rights activists report being attacked by some 100 thugs Sunday when they tried to visit activist Chen Guangcheng, who has been illegally confined to his house.

Beijing

Liu Li knew he might not be able to get to see the blind barefoot lawyer Chen Guangcheng on Sunday. After all, Mr. Chen, a persistent thorn in the Chinese government’s side, has been under heavily guarded house arrest for more than a year. But Mr. Liu did not expect to return on crutches from his attempted visit.

• 

In this undated file photo released by his supporters, blind activist Chen Guangcheng, right, sits in a village in China.

“About seven or eight men rushed up to me, kicked me to the ground, stole my cellphone, smashed my ankle and knocked me out,” Liu recalled Tuesday. “And the police did nothing when I reported what had happened.”

Liu was one of a group of around 40 activists who were attacked and beaten by more than 100 thugs on Sunday afternoon outside the village of Dongshigu in the eastern province of Shandong where Chen has been illegally locked up in his house with his family since being released from jail in September last year.

“I did not think the situation was so dark,” said Liu. “There is no law in that area.”

The violence marked the second weekend in a row that unidentified thugs have violently broken up efforts by human rights activists and ordinary citizens to visit Chen in a burgeoning campaign to win his freedom.

“Though it is extremely costly for the activists, [the campaign] is bringing a lot of attention to Chen’s case and there are chances that it could ultimately succeed if the pressure continues,” suggests Nicolas Bequelin, a China analyst with Human Rights Watch.

Chen has been under round-the-clock guard in his home village since being released at the end of a 51-month jail sentence he had incurred on charges of disrupting traffic. Human rights activists say the real reason he was imprisoned was his vigorous defense of women who had been forcibly sterilized in abuses of China’s one child policy.

Instead of being freed, Chen was put under house arrest with his wife and daughter, and forbidden to contact the outside world. Local and foreign activists doing their best to monitor his situation say they fear he has been regularly beaten.

Foreign journalists and European diplomats are among those who have been violently turned back when they have tried to visit Chen, and in recent weeks a growing number of courageous Chinese activists have risked being beaten up or detained trying to reach his house.

Read more at The Christian Science Monitor