REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

Where an Internet Joke Is Not Just a Joke

Wen Yunchao at his apartment in Hong Kong.                       By BROOK LARMER

Published: October 26, 2011

The cellphone vibrated softly, insistently, echoing off the whitewashed walls of the artist’s studio. It was a Sunday morning in early April, and Wang Bo — an Internet animator better known to his legions of online fans by his nickname, Pi San — ignored the call at first. He wanted no intrusions. A compact 40-year-old with short-cropped hair and arched eyebrows that give him a look of permanent bemusement, Pi San is most famous for creating a mischievous cartoon character named Kuang Kuang, but he earns money by making animations for corporations, and he was on a deadline. Pi San had bicycled to his studio in a defunct factory building on the outskirts of Beijing that morning, hoping to finish up some work in peace. But the buzzing of the phone didn’t stop.

The moment Pi San picked up, the caller blurted out the news: State security agents had just detained Ai Weiwei, China’s most famous contemporary artist and a government critic. Pi San spat out a profanity. Over the previous six weeks, hundreds of bloggers — lawyers, activists, journalists — had vanished into police custody in one of the harshest assaults on social activism in decades. Now they had Ai — fat, brilliant, bombastic and internationally renowned. If Ai could be arrested, was any independent thinker in China safe?

Pi San had reason to be scared. He and Ai were friends. A few weeks earlier, over lunch, the two artists talked about collaborating on a satirical Internet animation. Though a bit wary of Ai’s Web activism, Pi San admired his daring solo exhibitions in New York, Berlin and London. The most recent show had consisted of 100 million sunflower seeds made of porcelain, laid out across the floor of the Tate Modern, which visitors were invited to walk upon. Some considered the seeds to be symbols of the downtrodden Chinese people.

Despite his fear, Pi San quickly posted the news about Ai’s detention on Sina Weibo, China’s closely monitored equivalent of Twitter and the fastest-growing Internet platform in the world. An invisible censor deleted the message in seconds. He then tried posting, without comment, a cartoon drawing of Ai, the better to evade China’s word-sensitive filtering software. But the image disappeared, too — a sign that a human being, not computer software, had deleted the drawing. Pi San told his Weibo followers: “Again I was ‘harmonized.’ It’s just a picture!”

Read more at The New York Times

Ying Chan: competition over news intensifies in China

The International Press Institute, the world’s oldest global press freedom organisation, has published a report about the future of journalism and the implications on press freedom.

Brave News Worlds features the contributions of 42 editors, reporters, bloggers, consultants and media academics from round the globe and looks at how the media landscape is likely to change over the next decade. One of those contributors is Professor Ying Chan, Director of the JMSC.

The report was produced in collaboration with the Poynter Institute, a leading journalism centre based in Florida, USA. The report’s editor, Bill Mitchell, is head of the Poynter Institute’s Entrepreneurial Journalism and International Programmes.

“What’s emerging is a much sharper focus on how news can survive and even thrive going forward,” said Mitchell. “The report provides a special emphasis on the relationship between journalism and civic life, with specific, useful examples of who’s doing what around the world to sustain the critical linkage between the two.”

The report looks at different aspects of the press: the evolution of news; the role of journalists; the state of law, regulation and media freedom; the power of the people; emerging forms of journalism; traditional concepts re-framed and ownership. It also contains a series of ‘reports from the road’ which look at the state of journalism in countries round the globe.

Professor Ying Chan has contributed a paper to this series entitled ‘Competition Over News Intensifies in China, as Internet Offers Alternative Coverage’ (p. 112-115).

Chan wrote that while Western media is bemoaning the fact it’s shrinking, the media in China is growing thanks to a healthy economy, technological opportunities and state investment. When faced with restrictions imposed by the Communist state, many media organisations and individuals use the internet to circumvent or resist such censorship.

Read more at China Media Project

All the Propaganda That’s Fit to Print

Why Xinhua, China’s state news agency, could be the future of journalism.

It had all the trappings of a globally significant confab: big-deal appearances (by Google, BBC), a weighty theme (“the digital age”), and speechifying by international pooh-bahs. Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of News Corp., even delivered a peppery keynote, vowing war on “content kleptomaniacs.” But despite its name, the World Media Summit was itself a media bust, especially in the English-speaking press, which barely covered the three-day event held last fall in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People. The problem? The conference was a propagandafest, a “media Olympics” hosted by the Xinhua News Agency, an official organ of the Chinese Communist Party. If China has its way, however, ignoring Xinhua won’t be an option for long.

For decades Xinhua has been an unavoidable presence in China. It has a monopoly on official news and the regulatory power to complicate life for other media outfits. But as China has grown in wealth and international stature, Beijing has tired of feeling overlooked or maligned by the Western press. So Xinhua’s role has been redefined, as a means for China to wield soft power abroad. In the last year alone, the 80-year-old outlet launched a 24-hour -English--language news station, colonized a skyscraper in New York’s Times Square, and announced plans to expand its news--gathering operation from 120 to 200 overseas bureaus and as many as 6,000 journalists abroad. Not to be outdone by its Western peers, Xinhua has also released an iPhone app for “Xinhua news, cartoons, financial information and entertainment programs around the clock.”

With a price tag estimated in the billions of dollars, the new Xinhua is an expensive megaphone. But it’s key “to breaking the monopoly and verbal hegemony” of the West, according to remarks released last year by Xinhua’s president, Li Congjun, who often sounds like he’s channeling Noam Chomsky. Xinhua declined to make officials available for this story, citing “holiday season.” But clearly the effort has to do with the new rules of propaganda, too. Where the game was once about suppressing news, it’s now about overwhelming it, flooding the market with your own information. Airbrushing photos is for amateurs.

Read more at Newsweek

 

GQ China July 2010 Issue Yanked From Newsstands

 

 

GQ China's July issue was pulled from newsstands after "an unflattering feature on rich Chinese young people," the Wall Street Journal reports.

The article, titled "Super Kids Driving Luxury Cars," focused on six twentysomething Chinese members of Beijing's Sports Car Club, and featured several unflattering quotes from the members.

A sampling:

One man met an attractive woman and wanted to hang out -- until he realized her car was "five years out of fashion."

"Secondhand goods," he said, losing interest immediately.

This comment is rivaled in materialism perhaps only by 22-year-old model Ma Nuo's infamous claim that she would "rather weep in a BMW than smile on a bicycle."

The Sports Car Club president reportedly threatened to sue over the article because the writer allegedly did not make it clear enough that he was recording the interview. GQ declined to comment to the Wall Street Journal.

GQ China launched last fall in the hopes of targeting China's massive male market. It is just one of Condé Nast's pushes into the region, where the company — struggling in the United States — is looking for growth opportunities.

HUFFINGTONG POST

Speak of Motivation

People were asking why I had not commented on Wang Hui’s plagiarism scandal.  It’s not that I didn’t care. Truth is, I had selfish reasons for keeping silent.  The two recent open letters that stirred the water, one by Chinese scholars and the other by international scholars, have been dubbed as tit for tat, and I have friends in both camps of signatories.  Is my opinion on this more important than friendship?  For a while I was unsure. That was the main concern.  Another – somewhat petty – motivation was to steer clear of suspicion of personal grudge.

Not that I know Wang Hui personally.  Not really. I was a long-time reader of Du Shu (读书) magazine, and I liked it so much that I even subscribed from the US, which is quite expensive.  In my opinion it was during Wang Hui’s tenure as the editor that the magazine was the most interesting, thought provoking, and richest in content.  (With a different editor now, the magazine has become somewhat boring.)  I had always thought it’d be fun to chat with Wang Hui if there were a chance.

A few months ago, I attended the “Red Legacy in China” forum at Harvard University;   Wang Hui was one of the speakers. This was the first time I saw Wang Hui in person.  After the meeting, I went up to say Hello in the hallway.  I had already heard about his plagiarism scandal then, but I had no intention of mentioning it (and never did).  All I wanted to say was how much I enjoyed Du Shu under his editorship, with a slim hope for an intelligent conversation.

What I got was totally unexpected.  Wang Hui showed nothing but rudeness to me.  So much so that later Bob, who was waiting for me aside at the time, said, “Wow, that guy’s a real asshole. Either that, or he really needed to go to the bathroom.”

 

Read more at inside-out china

Aunty, Sky battle for diplomatic deal

CHINA has emerged as a front in the battle between Sky News and ABC to secure the next $100 million DEFAT contract to broadcast Australia Network.

ABC chairman Maurice Newman last week signed an agreement with Shanghai Media Group in China, while Sky chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos was on hand in Sydney on Thursday when regional pay-TV group Austar officially added Chinese national broadcaster CCTV to its line-up.

The ABC, which has the current Australia Network contract, said the agreement with SMG would give the two broadcasters the option to exchange television programs, provide news gathering support and explore international television program co-productions.

Selected Australia Network programs -- which range from ABC news to Bananas in Pyjamas and Home and Away -- "will soon" be seen on International Channel Shanghai.

Sky and the ABC are keen to underline their international credentials as Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith considers submissions on the future of Australia Network. Mr Smith received submissions from the ABC and Sky last Monday and will make a decision about whether to put the next five-year contract up for tender. An announcement is not expected until after the federal election.

The battle of Australia Network comes at a particularly tense time for the ABC and Sky, which is owned by Seven, Nine and BSkyB (part-owned by News Corporation, publisher of The Australian). The two broadcasters are now direct competitors following the launch of the ABC's 24-hour news channel.

Read more at The Australian

Foreigners getting bigger roles on Chinese TV

Along with men in fedoras and 1930s cars, the costume drama "Grassroots King" has a feature that nearly every Chinese TV show seems to require these days: a Western character.

Kerry Brogan, an actress from Newton, Mass., who plays the lead character's British girlfriend, is one of dozens of foreign performers on Chinese TV, recruited to appeal to increasingly worldly audiences.

Our audiences are no longer satisfied to watch foreign characters played by Chinese in a wig," said Yan Hao, a producer of "Feng Yu," a spy thriller whose cast includes three Western actors.

Producers who used to hire exchange students and other foreign amateurs to supply a dash of nonspeaking exotic color to TV shows now put out casting calls as far as the United States and Europe for professionals. They appear in productions as diverse as war stories and romances, and some host variety shows.

Brogan, a Mandarin speaker in her 20s, said she has appeared in 40 movies and TV productions. In "Grassroots King," a saga set in the turbulent years before World War II, she has a speaking role as a regularly appearing character.

"There's much greater desire to work together between Westerners and mainland Chinese people," Brogan said. "The market has a greater need."

Yan said Chinese audiences are looking for entertainment that reflects the world they see on the Internet and in China itself as society becomes more cosmopolitan.

Read more at theLos Angeles Times

Keep human hands digging out online dirt

 
A local bill in Zhejiang Province has recently triggered controversy over "human flesh searches" among Chinese netizens and media. Article 39 of the drafted Regulation on Promoting Information in Zhejiang Province, which is being proposed for approval by the provincial people's congress, stipulates that no organization or individual is allowed to publish, transmit, delete or change information that individuals have disclosed online.

It's clearly an attempt to restrict human flesh searches, which are massive and cooperative research efforts using Internet media such as blogs and forums for the purpose of identifying and exposing individuals who have come to the attention of netizens, most commonly supposedly corrupt officials. The term "human flesh" indicates the pivotal role human ingenuity plays in this process, far different from traditional online searches by computer algorithms.

Human flesh searches sound horrible. But they are an inevitable outcome of online discussions of topics that everybody is interested in. It exists in many countries and regions outside of China, under different names.

The prevalence of human flesh searches is largely due to a grass-roots sense of justice and sympathy.

When an official is caught abusing an ordinary person, for instance, netizens want to expose them and find out any other dealings they have, such as children at school in the US, expensive properties, and costly cars.

However, there's definitely a problem in that such searches may mislead the public and violate some people's legal rights and interests. For instance, in 2008, a game player was severely harassed due to netizens' beliefs that he had probably had a one night stand with another man's wife.

Read more at Global Times

Alleged 'rat-f**k' outburst tarnishes Aussie PM Kevin Rudd's China-friendly image

THE China-friendly image of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been tarnished by claims he branded the Chinese "f**kers" at the Copenhagen Climate Summit.

The ABC quotes today in the June edition of the Quarterly Essay, journalist David Marr as saying Mr Rudd remarked to a group of journalists and aides during the December 2009 summit that: "Those Chinese f**kers are trying to rat-f**k us."

The angry tirade reportedly came after tense negotiations with the Chinese, who are one of Australia's most important trading partners, over a binding agreement on reducing carbon emissions.

Mandarin-speaker Rudd - who has often spoken of his love for Beijing, where he worked as a diplomat in the 1980s - believed that the Chinese were frustrating efforts pursued by him and other countries, including the US, to negotiate an agreement.

It is not the first time he has been accused of bad-tempered outbursts. Last year he slammed lawmakers from his own Labor party as "f**kers" after they complained he had slashed their generous entitlements.

Meanwhile the Government's relationship with another Asian neighbour remains strained after Australia decided to take Japan to the International Court of Justice over its "scientific whaling" program, with Japanese officials telling the ABC today it was a political stunt.

news.com.au

Volunteering without a license

Eckart Loewe (卢安克), a volunteer teacher in a remote village in south China, used to keep a personal blog on which he described his thoughts on rural education.

Loewe works with "left behind children" (留守儿童), rural kids whose parents have gone elsewhere to make money as migrant workers. In the years he has been in China, he has kept a low profile and has refused TV interviews, preferring to concentrate on his work. However, at the end of 2009, he agreed to be interviewed by Chai Jing for CCTV's One on One program. Then he was profiled by the mainland's print media in both Chinese and English. The attention he received apparently grew too hard to handle, and earlier this week he shut down his blog.

Here is a translation of the statement he posted to his website:

I am not a native of this country, yet by interfering in business that a foreigner should not interfere in, I have made some natives uncomfortable. So as not to damage your pride, I should not interfere in the matter of left behind children. But if I drop it, then my students will be very upset. There is only one way to resolve this conflict: if outsiders don't know, then one will be made uncomfortable by my actions.

Attention from society has already exceeded my endurance; I cannot endure the consequences, responsibility, and stress brought about by society's response, so I can't let any more people learn about my situation. So I have to shut down my blog. I ask for your understanding.

Ultimately, more and more people will be uncomfortable for me, but I really do not want anyone to be made uncomfortable because of me.

At the request of the relevant departments, I make the following statement: I have no formal status as a volunteer, and I am not credentialed to teach in China.

If anyone tells you that I am promoting a particular person or thing, then you ought to know: I do not partner with others, I only serve others. If anyone collects fees or donations in my name, they retain them. I do not accept money. If somewhere you see me telling people to do things, you should know: that is not my intention. I will not tell people to do anything.

Read more at Danwei

Remembering the Tiananmen Square massacre

 
Ling, a leader in China's democracy movement in 1989, stands before the iconic photo of a man blocking Chinese tanks during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. (Photograph courtesy of Chai Ling)

On the eve of the 21st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, three former leaders of the pro-democracy demonstrations gathered Thursday night in Falls Church, Va., to share their memories and experiences since 1989.

Capt. Xiong Yan, Chai Ling and the Rev. Bob Fu were icons of the movement in China. Each remembers leading a group of students into the square, united by the "human spirit yearning for freedom," Mr. Fu said during a prayer service sponsored by China Aid at the History Sanctuary.

And all three recalled the tanks surrounding the square to attack. Mr. Xiong recalled when the first shots were fired, and his fellow students were strewn bleeding across the ground.

"Whenever I close my eyes, that picture will come up again," Mr. Xiong told the gathering.

But instead of trying to make a political statement with their stories, the three former pro-democracy leaders, now successful in their chosen fields, spent the anniversary praying for victims and perpetrators alike.

One by one, they gave their testimonies and led a group of 55 attendees in prayer, speaking in Chinese and English.

Mr. Xiong drew attention to the victims of Tiananmen and their relatives who suffered loss and subsequent discrimination. He asked the congregation to pray for those who were still in pain.

Mrs. Chai, who is starting a nonprofit group to help victims of forced abortion, spoke of the pain women and children in China endure under the communist regime's One-Child Policy.

Mr. Fu described some instances of persecution Chinese face if they choose to become Christians. He particularly stressed the story of Alim, a Uyghur man imprisoned for his faith.

All the while, the three also prayed for those causing the suffering: the soldiers at Tiananmen, the bureaucrats administering the One-Child Policy and the regime's officials.

Story Continues →

Mixed messages from the merry men

CHINESE cinema-goers will later this month thrill to Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett, as Robin Hood and Maid Marian, flinging the filthy French from the beloved homeland.

Their movie has been selected as one of the 20 foreign films annually given access to China.

At first blush, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor might seem the perfect theme for a society that has been avowedly communist for 60 years.

This, after all, was the way Mao Zedong came to power: leading a revolt against fat rural landowners and inherited wealth.

But a second take leads to different thoughts. Today, it is the Communist Party that is the establishment, and it is cadres who hold most of the keys to privilege and power. The wealthy are expected to become party members.

So who will Chinese viewers identify, if their thoughts turn to today's parallels, as the heroes and villains?

An erroneous view has taken root abroad, following the communist ascendancy, that China's culture is now - as people wrongly presume it always had been - one of subservience and deference to The Powers That Be: the kowtow as kosher.

If so, then, Chinese viewers of Robin Hood will rather focus on the theme of the righteous ruler returning to claim what is rightfully his, rather than on revolt.

The triads can be traced back, legend has it, to secretly loyal followers of the displaced Ming dynasty who conspired to undermine the succeeding Qing rulers, the Manchus, who had swept in from the northeast, from beyond the Great Wall. In this reading, the cruel yet oddly effete French rulers of England in Ridley film might have their equivalents in the Manchu-speaking barbarian Qing emperors.

Read more at The Australian

Bulgarian National Radio starts special programs on China

SOFIA, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Bulgarian National Radio on Tuesday started broadcasting a special program to promote understanding of the oriental nation.

The first of the monthly series, "Closer to China," was broadcast in Bulgarian and centered on the forthcoming World Expo in China's largest city, Shanghai.

Program anchor Nevena Pramatarova said future editions would cover culture, the arts, education and science.

Zhang Zhonghua, cultural counselor at the Chinese embassy, told the Bulgarian audience on Tuesday the World Expo, which starts on May 1, was expected to draw millions of visitors in the next six months.

The Chinese diplomat said the exposition would serve as a platform for mingling and comparing different cultures from around the world.

Founded in March 1930, Bulgarian National Radio now broadcasts in 11 languages and is a full member of the European Broadcasting Union.

XINHUA

The Story behind the nuclear scare

In more than one respect, the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme is similar to the North Korean nuclear dispute. The United States has labelled North Korea and Iran as rogue states and the labelling certainly serves Washington's global interests and agenda.

The neocon-scripted document titled Project for the New American Century, which some critics have slammed as Washington's Mein Kampf, expresses concern over US security interests in both East Asia and West Asia.

On East Asia, the document says, "the security of this strategically significant and increasingly tumultuous region has suffered from American neglect". It notes that East Asia has long been an area of great interest to China. "In recent years, China has gradually increased its presence and operations in the region."

Read more at Daily Mirror

Credibility of the US Media

"One has to ask, what about the people’s right to know the truth? Can there be a democracy if the people are not given truthful information on which to base their opinion? Or does democracy mean that a powerful media can serve the aggressive agenda of an imperial Washington and manipulate public opinion in order to launch one war of conquest after another?"

When it comes to important world news, the people of the US can count on their media to provide accurate information, right?

Just yesterday the Washington Post reported that Japan had finally agreed to accept a US relocation plan for its huge military base on Okinawa Island, after months of controversy and Japanese resistance to the plan. But later the same day, with more than 100,000 Japanese demonstrating in the streets against the US base, the Japanese premier announced exactly the opposite—that the US plan has been all but scrapped, adding that it is “regrettable that such a report was published ahead of an important rally.”

Indeed. It boggles the mind that a flagship US newspaper could get a major story so wrong. Not just off by a little bit, but exactly opposite to the actual truth. And timed, cynically, to coincide with a huge demonstration against the base.

The question is: How often does this happen? How often does the US media get the story wrong? The answer is that, when it comes to world news issues, the US media is streaming non-stop disinformation. And has been for a long time.

Read more at Media Monitors

Baidu's streaming video site, Qiyi, goes live

After a month of beta testing, Baidu's biggest new product, Qiyi.com, has been launched to the Chinese public. It's a streaming video site that focuses on Chinese TV series and movies, rather like Hulu in the US.

 Indeed, the US investors in Hulu have also ploughed USD 50 million into Qiyi. They're clearly hoping that the site can replicate the success of Hulu, which turned a profit in its first year of operation - a rare feat among video-sharing or video-on-demand sites - by generating massive ad revenue from its licensed content. Hulu this week announced a USD 10 per week subscription, but it's highly unlikely that such a model would be used by Baidu for Qiyi.

 Qiyi's content will also be fully licensed and above-board, leading the way in a clean-up in Chinese video sites, such as Youku and Tudou, who are now also removing huge swathes of TV series and entire movies - both Chinese and Hollywood/US content - from their vaults, in a year-long process of going legit, in order to attract more lucrative advertisers.

Read more at CNET

From China's mouth to Texan's ears: Outreach includes small station in Galveston

GALVESTON, TEX. -- Cruise southeast out of Houston, past the NASA exits and toward the Gulf of Mexico, and you pick up something a little incongruous on the radio, amid country crooners, Rush Limbaugh, hip-hop and all the freewheeling clamor of the American airwaves.

"China Radio International," a voice intones. "This is Beyond Beijing."

Way, way beyond Beijing.

Sandwiched between a Spanish Christian network and a local sports station, broadcasting at 1540 on your AM dial, is KGBC of Galveston, wholly American-owned and -operated, but with content provided exclusively by a mammoth, state-owned broadcaster from the People's Republic of China.

Call it KPRC. Or as the locals quip: Keep Galveston Broadcasting Chinese.

The little Texas station may be modest, but it is part of a multibillion-dollar effort by the Chinese government to expand its influence around the world. As China rises as a global force, its leaders think that their country is routinely mischaracterized and misunderstood and that China needs to spread its point of view on everything from economics to art to counter the influence of the West.

Beijing's new response is typically massive and ambitious: a $6.6 billion global strategy to create media giants that will challenge agenda-setting Western behemoths such as Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., the BBC and CNN.

Read more at The Washington Post

Confucius Institutes enhance China's int'l image

NEW YORK -- "Soft power", as defined by author and political analyst Joseph Nye, is a nation's ability to entice others through the use of positive cultural engagement. Utilizing soft power, one might convince others to "want what you want," Nye wrote in 2004.

Students perform a traditional Chinese ethnic dance in a competition of Chinese proficiency for non-Chinese college students in New York last weekend. [Wu Kaixiang / Xinhua News Agency]

As America's power wanes on a variety of fronts, China is taking action to match its own increasing wealth with greater soft power. In 2007, Hu Jintao told the 17th Communist Party Congress that China must work on enhancing its cultural capital.

"Culture has become a more and more important source of national cohesion and creativity and a factor of growing significance in the competition in overall national strength," Hu said.

The Beijing Olympics was widely regarded as a successful attempt to introduce Chinese culture to the rest of the world. In a less showy manner, the government is aiming to accomplish much more by establishing language centers called Confucius Institutes in 87 countries.

Read more at China Daily

China's Box-Office Gold Rush

BEIJING--Zhang Zhao fled China for the U.S. soon after the crushing of the 1989 student democracy movement. His degree from Shanghai's Fudan University was in computer science, but his plan at New York University was to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy.

His larger goal, though, was to "change people's lives"—and when he decided he was instead on the path to becoming an academic, he moved across campus to NYU's film program. He'd had only a vague notion about it, but the idea rekindled a passion born when he began acting with drama groups in high school.

"I spent half my time at Fudan—half of four years as an undergrad and three years in grad school—in the drama clubs," Mr. Zhang recalls.

One thing he learned at NYU is that the life of the independent filmmaker is largely a chase after financing. A few years after arriving, he took the little money he'd saved and a $10,000 grant from Temple University to make his thesis film, "Landing," about the kind of immigrant experience he himself had been anxious to avoid—the 35-minute story of a Chinese cellist who ends up a down-and-out Chinatown delivery boy.

But Mr. Zhang returned to China in 1998, and now he's the man with the money: As head of Enlight Pictures, a unit of Enlight Media and one of the new film companies aspiring to tell Chinese stories to a rapidly expanding domestic audience, he has plans for an initial slate of 40 movies, and no problem with financing.

read more at The Wall Street Journal

Illegal Satellite TV in China Brings CNN to the Masses

A black market for satellite TV is booming in China as the middle class grows there, bringing foreign channels like CNN and MTV to a much wider audience than allowed by the government.

Satellite TV is legal only for select viewers in China. Content deemed pornographic, violent or threatening to state interests is also banned, a potential roadblock for a range of overseas programming. News stations like CNN and BBC, for instance, are unafraid to air criticisms of the Chinese government that would bring harsh punishment upon a domestic TV station. But satellite dishes that pick up those and other foreign channels, such as ESPN and HBO, have grown popular among white-collar workers despite all the rules.

In 2008 in China, more than 10 million satellite dishes shipped that could receive overseas signals with the standard DVB-S (Digital Video Broadcasting-Satellite), according to market researcher iSuppli.

"In principle, this market is prohibited," said iSuppli analyst Horse Liu.

Read more at PCWorld

Why We Need A China Tracker

I'm thrilled to introduce this blog to the world. Its launch comes at a time when, in at least one respect, China is scaling back. The nation is reining in lending and imposing other measures to suppress skyrocketing property prices. But spending on overseas investment is not dampening--and that's what we aim to cover.

The numbers alone provide justification aplenty for pursuing this topic. China has spent $175 billion on transactions since 2005--and that only includes deals worth more than $100 million, according to Heritage Foundation data. As Heritage research fellow Derek Scissors points out: "China over the next decade will increasingly seek to divert its horde of dollars and euros to non-bond investments at home and abroad." He predicts that Chinese outward investment will exceed $100 billion a year by 2015.

Read more at Forbes

Daring China Newspaper Touches Sensitive Topic

In spite of the Chinese regime’s tight grip on media within China, on rare occasions a few mainland media have dared to print articles critical of the regime’s authority. Southern Metropolis Daily, also known as Southern Metropolitan Daily, is one of those.

The sign says The Chinese Communist Party is NOT China. (screenshot)

The paper published an article on April 11 that has Internet users and other observers astir about references to the regime.

Historian Hong Zhenkuai authored the commentary titled Love for the Country Does Not Equate to Love for the Imperial Court. He stated that the imperial court may change, but China will continue to exist. He concluded by saying, “The patriotism of the people should be directed toward the country, not the Imperial Court.”

Read more at The Epoch Times

2 China lawyers who defended Falun Gong face ban

BEIJING — Two Chinese lawyers who represented a Falun Gong practitioner face the permanent loss of their legal licenses – a new government tactic to tighten its grip on human rights defenders.

Dozens of lawyers are expected to attend Thursday's hearing in support of Tang Jitian and Liu Wei, who are accused of "disrupting the order of the court" during an April 2009 trial in which they defended a follower of the banned spiritual group.

The two lawyers say they were illegally videotaped during the trial, interrupted repeatedly by the judge and ordered out of the courtroom by unidentified men.

An e-mail circulating among Chinese lawyers Wednesday said Tang and Liu would be the first lawyers in Beijing, where most rights lawyers are based, to lose their licenses permanently without having a criminal conviction.

Read more at The Huffington Post

English acronyms “ban” draws fire

Hangzhou’s Morning Express, a commercial spin-off of the official Zhejiang Daily [view on the China Media Map], reported on April 6 that the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT), China’s top broadcast authority, had banned the use of English-language acronyms in television and radio broadcasts.

The news quickly spread through the Web, and the official English-language China Daily, a newspaper for foreign consumption published by the State Council Information Office, reported on April 10 that “Chinese people, both ordinary viewers and linguists, are split over the matter.” The paper, which reported that a “heated debate is underway,” said the action had been taken to “alleviate the concern [that] too many English abbreviations have mixed with Chinese and soiled the purity of the Chinese language and Chinese culture.”

On April 15, SARFT deputy inspector Gao Changli said the notice from his ministry had been “misunderstood.” The intention, he said, was not to ban certain language usages, but rather to standardize the practice.

“[We] don’t rule out alien culture,” Gao was quoted as saying.

Read more at China Media Project

Qinghai quake spared media circus

When the earth shakes, the world's media trembles with anticipation. Although earthquakes are random acts of nature and unevenly distributed, news consumers everywhere can instantly empathize with the shock, grief and loss when the very earth underfoot unexpectedly sways or gives way.

Although earthquakes are natural tectonic adjustments, they produce devastation and human tragedy comparable to war. While wars are wholly man-made and a reflection of the foibles and follies of humankind, earthquakes cannot rightfully be blamed on people, though the desire to find fault in the aftermath of a tremblor is potent.

I remember walking through the ruins of Kobe in January 1995, when homeless citizens clustered around bonfires to keep warm and lined up to get drinking water and hot noodles. There was palpable anger at the Japanese authorities for not saving this or that location, for allowing fires to burn, for allegedly favoring rich areas and ignoring the poor. While Japan's response did not meet the high expectations residents had of their "anzen kuni" or "land of safety," much of the criticism was emotional rather than rational.

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