REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

Killing Children - An Act of War Against China’s Collective Future

In Hanzhong, Shannxi, a mother-and-son team rented a rural property to open a private kindergarten for 20 children. One day the son found a snake inside and killed it. This disturbed the property owner, 48-year-old Wu Huanming, who had been suffering from a variety of diseases and had grown increasingly superstitious in recent years. Blaming the snake killing for the ineffectiveness of his medical treatment, Wu went into a frenzy. On the morning of May 12, Wu entered the kindergarten carrying a meat cleaver and hacked to death seven children, along with the mother-and-son proprietors, wounding another 11 children in the process. Wu committed suicide afterward.

Hanzhong police provided these details at a press conference a day after the killing, according to Xi’an Morning Post.  At first glance, it looked like another malignant but isolated crime. In fact, it was only the latest in a series of mass attacks on young children in different provinces of China that occurred between March 23 and May 12. Beijing police said last Wednesday they successfully interdicted seven criminal attempts targeting schools and kindergartens in that city alone.

All over China, people winced. Why are young children being slaughtered? Such massive attacks on children did not happen even in the Cultural Revolution, the most violent period of Communist China. And now China is experiencing unprecedented prosperity.

Despite the apparent similarities in actions and targets, there is no universal explanation of motive. Among the killers besides Wu Huanming were a doctor who could not find a job and, at age 42, had a history of failed relationships, a 40-year-old villager who had suffered mental illness for five years, a 31-year-old school teacher on sick leave for four years; a 46-year-old unemployed man with debts resulting from multi-level marketing, and a 45-year-old villager whose newly-built house faced demolition.

Two of the six suspects were said to have suffered mental illness, prompting concerns about China’s lack of mental health care. But insanity can hardly explain the other four cases.

Most of the suspects lived at the bottom of the society, leading observers to blame their anger and desperation on the wealth gap. The Internet is abuzz with questions about whether China’s economy should be characterized as that of a “rich state, poor people.” But even this does not explain why children were repeatedly targeted.

Chinese cherish children as the promise of their future and their defense against death. Though rare stories exist about “exchanging [dead] children to eat” (“易子而食”),  those were from disastrous periods of war and famine, when desperation was all there was. Has China today entered such a period of extreme disaster?

Harming children on a mass scale did not start this year. As early as 2004, long before the Sanlu milk scandal, there was the “dark-heart milk powder” incident in which counterfeit milk powder caused the deaths of 13 babies and permanent disablement of 171 others. It outraged the entire nation that someone would target babies to make a profit. That incident reflected a moral decay in China, but no one could have foreseen that child-harming would escalate to the raw violence seen this year.

In one of the six recent school attacks, 45-year-old Wang Yonglai was an even-tempered Shandong villager and a long-time party member. On the morning of April 30, Wang carried a hammer to the village’s elementary school, and pounded five preschool children on their heads. Wang then poured gasoline on himself, grabbed two children into his arms, and lit himself on fire. While Wang burned to death, the two children were pulled to safety by teachers.

Read more at Inside-Out China  http://www.insideoutchina.com/

Man Stabs 28 Children at Kindergarten in China

(AP)  A knife-wielding man wounded 28 children and three adults Thursday at a kindergarten in eastern Jiangsu province, the second such violent assault at a Chinese school in two days.

A 47-year-old man wounded 28 children and three adults at a kindergarten in eastern Jiangsu province April 29, 2010.  (CBS/AP)

Five of the students were in critical condition in hospital, said Zhu Guiming, an official with the propaganda department in Taixing city. Zhu said two teachers and a security guard also were hurt.

The attacker was a 47-year-old local man, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The violence was the latest in a string of attacks on young children at Chinese schools. On Wednesday, a man broke into a primary school in Guangdong province in southern China and wounded 15 students and a teacher in a knife attack.

The rampage Wednesday in Leizhou city came on the same day as another assailant was executed for killing eight children last month in stabbings that shocked China.

Xinhua said no other details were known in the lastest case in Jiangsu.

Read more a CBSNews

Why does Japan STILL refuse to face up to the atrocity its army revelled in? Two new films have reopened old wounds about the Nanking Massacre

The competition was reported in a Tokyo newspaper, and it was clear that two soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army were partaking with extraordinary enthusiasm. 

‘Incredible record in the contest to behead 100 people!’ screamed the headline with gruesome relish. ‘Mukai 106 - 105 Noda - Both 2nd Lieutenants go into extra innings.’

According to the report, two junior officers had a wager to see who could decapitate 100 Chinese soldiers first.

Brutal history: A scene from the new film City Of Life And Death

But they hit their target so quickly that they decided to set a new goal of 150. The date was December 13, 1937, and the Japanese Imperial Army was in the process of ruthlessly conquering Nanking, which was then the capital of China.

Ten years later, the story came to the attention of the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal.

Second Lieutenants Mukai and Noda were extradited from Japan and executed.

Hitler and Stalin may have killed millions more by gassing or starving, but the sheer velocity of the Nanking massacre is what takes the breath away.

In just six weeks, hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians were slaughtered by the Imperial Army in and around Nanking.

Quite how many hundreds of thousands has never been agreed.

China claims 300,000. The official tribunal put the death toll at 200,000.

Read more at The Daily Mail Online

Crime Fiction: The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell

In the world of crime fiction, sometimes it seems as if the only thing anyone’s talking about is Lisbeth Salander, the heroine of Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy.” Those three novels -- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (due out in the States next month) -- comprise one of the finest series of crime thrillers ever written. In sparse, precise prose, Larsson paints vivid characters, plots nail-biting action and leaves readers wanting what every writer hopes his readers will want: more.

But as good as Mr. Larsson’s books are, they’re not the only game in Stockholm. Henning Mankell, well-known for his Kurt Wallander series of mysteries, has just published a real blockbuster read, The Man from Beijing

(Knopf). Set in more or less the same world as Larsson’s series -- Sweden -- this standalone work is a sprawling tale of desperation, crime, revenge, sibling rivalry and relentless investigation. Its plot begins in present-day Sweden, then jumps back to America in the mid-1800s, then on to today’s China, and finally back to Sweden. No single-location mystery for Mankell; by opening up his plot to many nations and time periods, the author is able to pack his story with every manner of conflict, from human to cultural to historical.

Read more at January Magazine

Hong Kong Police Arrest Two More After Record Cocaine Discovery

April 28 (Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong police arrested two more men in relation to the accidental discovery of a record 372kg of cocaine earlier this week.

The arrests bring to 10 the number of people detained after officers investigating a missing person report stumbled across the drugs, estimated by police to be worth up to HK$337 million ($43.4 million), on the rooftop of a village house close to the border with mainland China. Two men and two women have been charged with drug-trafficking offences, a police statement said.

Chang Ma-ki, a Dutch passport holder, was reported missing on April 23 after telling his wife to contact police if he didn’t return from a meeting in relation to the drugs, the South China Morning Post reported, citing an unidentified police officer.

Read more at BusinessWeek

China executes killer of eight school children

Zheng was put to death one month after the attack

A former community doctor who killed eight school children in China's eastern Fujian province has been executed, state media say.

Zheng Minsheng, 42, was shot in the city of Nanping after China's top court approved his sentence, Xinhua news agency reported.

The execution came one month after he stabbed eight young children to death at a primary school in the same city.

Police said he carried out the attack after breaking up with a girlfriend.

Reports at the time of the attack had suggested he had a history of mental illness, but state media later quoted police as saying that was not the case.

Five other children were injured in the 23 March attack.

Zheng was convicted on 8 April and had appealed unsuccessfully against his death sentence.

BBC

Hong Kong police make largest drug bust

HONG KONG -- In their largest haul ever, police in Hong Kong have seized 820 pounds (372 kilograms) of cocaine from a suburban house that was reportedly part of a botched drug shipment sent to the southern Chinese territory by mistake.

Officers discovered the stash - which has a street value of 337 million Hong Kong dollars ($43.4 million) - while investigating a missing person report in the suburban Fanling district on Sunday, Hong Kong police said in a statement.

The cocaine was stored in 26 boxes on the roof of the three-story village house, the South China Morning Post reported Tuesday.

Read more at The Washington Post

Chinese Spying in the United States

A secret FBI videotape showing the transfer of classified military documents to a communist Chinese agent was released in February to the world, providing a brief peek at the shadowy world of espionage against America. Pentagon analyst Gregg Bergersen with the Defense Security Cooperation Agency is shown receiving a wad of bills and telling People’s Republic of China spy Tai Shen Kuo that he’s “very reticent” to let him have the information “because it’s all classified.”

The documents included sensitive material about weapons sales to Taiwan — a U.S. ally, which the communist regime considers a breakaway province to be conquered eventually — and details of a communications system. Bergersen told Kuo: “You can take all the notes you want … but if it ever fell into the wrong hands … then I would be fired for sure. I’d go to jail because I violated all the rules.” He was eventually convicted and sentenced to five years, while Kuo received a 15-year sentence. The investigation also identified other sources who were providing secrets about American space and naval technology to the PRC.

In February, another Chinese spy was sentenced to 15 years in jail for stealing sensitive secrets from his former employers — Boeing and Rockwell International — and passing them to the communist regime. Engineer Dongfan “Greg” Chung reportedly gave up trade secrets about American space shuttles, military aircraft, and even the Delta IV rocket. Though Chung was 73 years old, the judge said he handed out the possible life sentence as a message to the Chinese government: “Stop sending your spies here.”

Read more at NewAmerican

Officials protected 'majority of gangs'

Chongqing High People's Court says total of 24 officials involved

BEIJING - More than half of the gangs busted in the crackdown in Chongqing municipality last year were protected by government officials, the Chongqing High People's Court said in a report released on Thursday.

Twenty-four government officials are either under investigation or face prosecution for cover-ups and conniving with mafia-style gangs, said the report, which included an analysis of the 29 cases handled by the municipality's court last year.

"Some officials didn't follow their duties to prohibit certain acts. Some of them illegally released information of cases under investigation. Some made it seem the criminals surrendered to the police to cover up bigger crimes. And some abused their power to prevent other officials from carrying out their duties," the report said.

Read more at China Daily

Pain for Asian youth didn't end with school assault

On March 16, ninth grader Lindi Liu was exiting a bathroom stall at South Philadelphia High when another boy kicked the door inward, bashing him in the head.

As Liu picked himself up off the floor, he could hear the boy laughing.

The incident lasted only seconds, but for Liu, a 16-year-old immigrant from China, the consequences have been profound.

His vision frequently turns blurry, to where he can't count fingers held in front of his face. He forgets conversations that occurred moments earlier, and sometimes struggles to identify everyday objects, like the chicken on his dinner plate. He gets sudden nose bleeds.

District spokesman Fernando Gallard said the school inquiry showed Liu was injured carelessly but unintentionally. The boy was kicking the doors of the stalls in turn, and did not realize Liu was there, he said.

"It seems it was not intended as an assault or intended to injure anyone," he said.

However, a student who was in the bathroom at the time contradicted that.

Read more at The Philadelphia Inquirer

36m copies of illegal publications destroyed

China has destroyed 36 million copies of pirated and illegal publications in its 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, in a bid to show the government's determination in protecting intellectual property, the Guangming Daily reported Monday.

Each year in celebrating World Intellectual Property Day, which falls on April 26, China will hold activities nationwide to destroy pirated and illegal publications, in order to increase public awareness of intellectual property protection.

A total of 15 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities each destroyed more than 1 million copies of pirated and illegal publications in this year's activity.

It was reported that China had obtained 8.48 million illegal publications and handled 1,894 intellectual property infringement cases in the first quarter of this year in a bid to create a good cultural environment for the Shanghai Word Expo.

China Daily

Oakland Street Killing: Shocking

I attended a vigil for Tian Sheng Yu in uptown Oakland (California) on Friday (April 23). I didn't know him, yet I was among about 100 people who gathered on a gorgeous spring afternoon at 18th Street and Telegraph Avenue, a few steps away from the grand entrance of beautifully restored Fox Oakland Theater, a former movie house where I used to pay a quarter to see double-features (in the late 1940s and early 1950s!).

This was where Mr. Yu was beaten and later died in what has been described as a random attack by two 18-year-old men (boys?) exactly a week prior to the vigil.

The beating and subsequent death of Mr. Yu, who was 59 years old, have shocked Oaklanders, especially those of Chinese and Asian descent, but from the looks of those attending the vigil, people of all ethnic backgrounds and ages were emotionally affected by this senseless street violence.

Mr. Yu wasn't even an Oaklander. He was a home-care worker in San Francisco, a fairly recent immigrant from China.

Read more at The San Francisco Chronicle

Is He Kidding? Mickey Rourke as Genghis Khan?

If you're annoyed about random Asian characters being re-done by the white folk, how about this: Mickey Rourke told the Orlando Sentinel that he is going to play Genghis Khan in an upcoming biopic. Genghis. Khan. In other words, the Mongolian emperor whose invasions of neighboring lands earned him much of Central Asia and China, before successors stretched the barriers even further.

As a story of conquest, we're talking the thundering hooves of horses, large-scale massacres, and all the charming aspects of war -- prime content for a man like Rourke. But playing an Asian conqueror? What is this? 1965 and Laurence Olivier playing Othello? 1956 and John Wayne playing Genghis? It would be just as weird as John Cho playing Christopher Columbus. Anyhow, Rourke says that John Milius, the pen behind Red Dawn and Apocalypse Now, wrote the script, and it will focus on how Genghis' son and grandson saw him. "You see him in flashbacks, back when he was in his mid-40s. And back then, being in your mid-40s was being REALLY old." Rourke goes on to discuss how he's probably a better horse rider than he is a car driver, has his great stunt crew ready for the gig, and really likes that Khan was also a dog lover: "in one instance, in this script, he orders his men -- 'Hold the dogs back.' He was looking out for the dogs. I like that."

Is Rourke just kidding? Is this really happening? Weigh in with your thoughts below.

Cinematical

Botnet Server Escapes to China

Last week, security experts based in Hong Kong succeeded in taking out a key piece of the Koobface botnet, only to have it pop up in China. Koobface, which uploads stolen user names and passwords to a remote server, was taken down by the Hong Kong Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Centre (HKCERT) last week.

However, the cyber criminals running Koobface merely moved the server to a hosting company in China. The Koobface botnet initially spread via social networking sites.

“When a botnet server is taken down, botnet owners tend to avail of bulletproof hosting services or the services of hosting companies that are hard to take down, which not only means business as usual for cybercriminals but also means they are shoring up their ‘defenses,’” writes a researcher at TrendLabs.

The New New Internet

Heads in high places begin to roll

As China continues with its crackdown against organised crime, details have emerged on how well connected the crime tzars were.

CHINA’S biggest triad crackdown in a decade has seen 29 gang leaders and businessmen and six high-ranking police, government and judicial officials in Chongqing municipality sentenced so far.

The high-flying criminals and corrupt officials were handed sentences ranging from jail terms of between four-and-a-half and 20 years to life imprisonment and the death penalty.

And dozens more are expected to be prosecuted in the next few months.

The series of trials unveiled a complicated web linking the accused to one another in one of the most well-organised criminal set-ups in the city’s history.

Read more at The Star

Huang Guangyu, once China's richest man, goes on trial for bribery today

Huang Guangyu, once China’s richest man, has gone on trial on bribery and corruption charges more than a year after he was arrested in unexplained circumstances.

Huang Guangyu, pictured on the left, has gone on trial today.

The trial of Mr Huang, the founder of GOME, one of China’s largest electronic and white good chain stores, opened in Beijing the state-run Xinhua news agency confirmed without releasing further details. Mr Huang, who topped China’s Hurun rich-list in 2008 with a fortune of $6.3bn (£4bn), was known as “The Price Butcher” for the rock-bottom bargains offered in his stores.

Few details of his case have been released since he disappeared from public view in November 2008 beyond the bald charge of “illegal business practices” relating to alleged insider share dealing and bribery.

Read more at The Telegraph

Smuggled iPads are seized on way from Hong Kong to China

Hong Kong - Twenty-eight new Apple iPads have been seized from a lorry that was allegedly trying to smuggle them from Hong Kong to China, customs officials said Thursday.The iPads - which have not yet been officially launched in Hong Kong or China - were among a haul of undeclared electronic goods on the lorry worth more than 200,000 US dollars.A customs department spokesman in Hong Kong said the truck was stopped at a border checkpoint on its way to mainland China earlier this week. The 43-year-old driver was arrested and released on bail.Around 1,000 iPads were snapped up as costly parallel imports in Hong Kong in early April soon after when the sought-after device was launched in the US.Buyers paid around 775 US dollars for a basic model, 50 per cent more than in the US. Shops said around half of their customers were from mainland China where the devices sell for even higher prices.

EarthTimes

Hedge Fund Manager Released On Bail in Texas/Canada/China Investment Fraud Case

New York (HedgeCo.net) – Weizhen Tang was jailed in mid-January this year on the charges of running a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme. The SEC said that the defendant orchestrated the fraud through an overseas hedge fund and a Texas-based investment adviser.

Tang was released after a bail review on $150,000 bail, the Toronto Sun reported. The bail conditions order the hedge fund manager to stay in Canada and do not permit him from communicating with investors or hedge funds.

The fraud is alleged to have began as early as 2004, and through the hedge fund Tang raised between $50 million and $75 million from more than 200 investors. According to the SEC complaint, more than $51 million was allegedly involved in the hedge fund failure.

A Judge also previously granted a temporary restraining order, asset freeze, and other emergency relief against the defendants.

“I want a chance to prove my innocence, that’s why I came back from China,” Weizhen Tang told reporters at the Toronto Sun.

Hedge Co

South Chinese prosecutors jail two cult leaders

Changsha (China), Apr.21 (ANI): Prosecutors in the Changsha area of China's southern Hunan Province have jailed two persons for pursuing local cult activities.

Chen Wenbin was sentenced to four years in jail and Li Juanlan to three years and six months for promoting activities of the banned Shijishen, or Real God, cult, the China Daily quoted prosecutors, as saying on Tuesday.

Administrative director Xiao of the Beihu Procuratorate of Chenzhou City said Chen was the "life executive" responsible for all local cult activities.

He managed the delivery of all promotional brochures, books and videos from Guangdong Province to Chenzhou City, where Li took over.

Li, chief steward of the cult since October 2008, was in charge of the distribution of the materials and collected 4,000 to 5,000 yuan per month from cult members, Xiao said.

The pair were convicted and sentenced at the People's Court of Beihu on April 15, said Xiao.

The Shijishen cult was founded in 1993 in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

It was listed as a cult by China's central government in 1995.

oneindia

China tycoon Huang to face trial this week

BEIJING, April 20 (Reuters) - Huang Guangyu, once China's richest man and the founder of a major retail chain, will go on trial this week over charges of insider trading, state media reported on Tuesday.

Huang, who made his fortune by founding and building up GOMEe Electrical Appliances Holdings Ldt (0493.HK), dubbed China's Best Buy, will be tried in the Beijing Second Intermediate People's Court starting on Thursday, according to the Oriental Morning Post, which cited an unnamed source.

To ensure that appropriate security can be provided for the high-profile trial, the court will halt all other proceedings while hearing Huang's case over three days, the newspaper said.

Read more at REUTERS

Expo crime sweep: 6,000 held

SHANGHAI - POLICE in World Expo host city Shanghai detained more than 6,000 people in a crime sweep, state press said on Tuesday, as they ramp up security ahead of the huge event's May 1 kick-off.

The April 3-14 'special crackdown' rounded up law-breakers involved in a wide range of crimes including theft, prostitution, gambling, selling pornography and illegal street hawking, the China Daily said.

However, all but nearly 1,300 were later released after being 'educated,' the China Daily said. The crackdown 'is the fourth of its kind in less than two months in a move by police to make the city safer during the upcoming Expo,' the paper said.

Read more at The Straits Times

Google cyberattack hit password system: report

Reuters) - A December cyberattack on Google Inc computers hit the company's password system that millions of people worldwide use to access almost all of the company's Web services, The New York Times reported, citing a person with direct knowledge of the investigation.

The closely-guarded program is considered a crown jewel at Google, enabling users and employees to sign in with their password only once to operate various services including e-mail and business applications, the newspaper said in its April 20 edition.

Google did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Code-named Gaia for the Greek goddess of the earth, and still in use under the name Single Sign-On, the program was described publicly only once at a technical conference four years ago, the newspaper said.

Read more at REUTERS

Kowloon Walled City

Today, it's one of the most peaceful locations in the city. The gardens are beautifully landscaped and connected by long, low archways that are remnant of the Qing Dynasty's architecture. There are ponds, waterfalls, dragonflies; everything you might associate with traditional Chinese gardens.

But just less than two decades ago, the same soil was the foundation to a very different environment; a lawless territory that was born out of Hong Kong's identity crisis and foreign occupation. A 6.5 acre plot of land that was home to nearly 33,000 people and a collection of brothels, opium dens, casinos, cocaine parlors, and secret factories. Kowloon Walled City, or Hak Nam...the City of Darkness.

At the peak of the Walled City's existence in the 1980's, the streets were lit by fluorescent bulbs 24 hours a day. The ground level rarely received full sunlight because of the density and height of the buildings that were haphazardly constructed without formal building permits. There were only two guidelines for construction in the city: the height of apartment structures could not exceed 14 stories because of its presence on Kai Tak's flight path, and apartments had to be wired with electricity, to prevent the use of open flames.

Beyond that, there was no governing body or police force; it was run by drug lords, organized crime syndicates, and unlicensed dentists that held practice in cramped apartment spaces.

Read more at Dim Sum Dialogues

An American hero in Nanking

American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin

Illinois native Minnie Vautrin must rank as one of America's greatest unsung heroines. This excellent biography of Vautrin vividly recounts how her superhuman courage prevented Japanese soldiers, wild-eyed with lust and anger, from raping women when they plundered the doomed Chinese city of Nanking in December 1937. That Vautrin stood for dignity during the Rape of Nanking makes her an American idealist in war; her lonely death makes her a tragic figure.

Vautrin was born in Secor, a small farming town in the center of Illinois. Dreaming of being a teacher, Vautrin worked her way through high school and entered college in 1910. The God-fearing prairie girl eventually decided to spread the Bible; she came to the "heathen" Middle Kingdom in 1912.

Read more at Asia Times

Rio Tinto mops up after China bribery mess

ANTHONY Loo lives in Las Vegas, thousands of kilometres from his former home in Beijing.

Until nine months ago, Loo headed Rio Tinto's operations in China, and it was on his watch that four senior employees, including Chinese-born Australian Stern Hu, collected millions of dollars in bribes from about 20 Chinese steel mills and other local companies.

Those four are now in jail, serving a combined total of 39 years for bribery and stealing state secrets, although everyone except Hu has appealed.

Loo, in the meantime, remains with Rio. It was only in June last year that he was speaking regularly to Hu -- Rio's go-to man for iron ore for more than a decade in the company's largest market for the red dirt essential for steelmaking. They often sat together in the company's Shanghai headquarters.

Loo left China just days after the arrest of Hu and his colleagues and it remains unclear what his role is today. The company does not have an office in America's gambling capital. The Weekend Australian understands he is helping the company with its review of issues exposed by the Hu case, but Rio won't say.

There is no suggestion Loo was involved the activities that ultimately sent Hu and his colleagues to jail. But shareholders are entitled to know how Hu's superiors did not detect anything amiss.

Read more at The Australian