Caixin Media
07.02.12Deal Puts Saab in Green Technology Driver’s Seat
The dark clouds over bankrupt Swedish car maker Saab have finally cleared.Saab Automobile AB’s liquidator signed an agreement in mid-June with National Electric Vehicle Sweden AB (NEVS) to sell the company’s main assets to the Sino-Japanese...
Media
06.30.12Bloomberg Unearths Xi Jinping’s Family Fortune
A recent Bloomberg report detailing the millionaire assets of the extended family of Xi Jinping, China’s presumptive next leader, has drawn praise from the community of China media observers for its thorough investigative work and fact-...
Caixin Media
06.29.12Barclay’s Diamond Offers an Optimistic Vision
A calm, confident Robert Diamond discussed financial restructuring in Europe and economic options for the Chinese government during a June 14 interview—thirteen days before the British bank where he serves as CEO, Barclays Group, was fined for...
Caixin Media
06.29.12Shale Gas Race
The shale gas revolution in the United States has led to a debate in China over shale gas development. But can the United States really achieve energy self-sufficiency? And if it can, what are the implications for China?Ever since the Nixon era,...
Environment
06.29.12The Double Life of Dali Lake
from chinadialogue
Every spring, migratory birds start arriving at Dali Lake in Inner Mongolia just as the fish-breeding season gets under way. This has been the time—at least until recently—when herders living around the lake have heard the sounds of firecrackers...
Caixin Media
06.27.12Cash for China’s Homegrown Smartphone
Xiaomi Mobile Internet Co. has raised US$216 million, its CEO says, raising the total value of the upstart, homegrown Chinese smartphone maker to US$4 billion.If Lei Jun’s claim is accurate, his two-year-old company’s value is close to the market...
Out of School
06.25.12Review: “The Revolutionary”
The Revolutionary, a new documentary that has begun showing on university campuses and at cultural centers, looks at the life of Sidney Rittenberg, a ninety-year-old man who has had an extraordinary variety of experiences. Born into a well-to-do...
Media
06.23.12Self-Censorship at the South China Morning Post?
According to an article published on June 19 in the Asia Sentinel, an internal squabble at the Hong Kong-based English language newspaper the South China Morning Post has led some to raise questions regarding the journalistic ethics of the long-...
Caixin Media
06.21.12Economist Sees Room for Slashing Taxes
Increasing government spending would be a disservice to society rather than a benefit if Beijing wants to create a consumption-led economy, one economist says in a recent research report.“The so-called ‘structural optimization,’ which refers to...
Caixin Media
06.20.12China’s Food Fright
There’s no denying that the gastronomic horizons of Chinese cuisines sometimes verge on the infinite. But on factors of food quality, there’s little subtlety or nuance for safety standards.In the past five years, the number of public food and drug...
Media
06.18.12Happiness with Chinese Characteristics
On April 2, 2012, the United Nations released the first World Happiness Report on the occasion of its first General Assembly on “Happiness and Wellbeing: Defining a New Economic Paradigm.” It ranked China the 112th happiest country out of 156. As an...
Caixin Media
06.18.12Recurring Dreams for the Rule of Law
On the Beijing campus of the China University of Political Science and Law stands a dramatic monument inscribed with the words of legal expert and former university president Jiang Ping: “Rule of Law for Everyone.”Jiang’s words carry special weight...
Environment
06.14.12Rio and China’s Global Future
from chinadialogue
We have a common predicament, and solving it requires humanity to work together. But state actors are, to a large degree, controlled by the confrontational logic of international politics. The dualities and contradictions common in sustainable...
Caixin Media
06.14.12Private Economy’s Original Sin
Whether measured in terms of gross domestic product, tax contributions or job creation, statistics prove that the private economy plays a crucial role in China.In some well-developed parts of the country the private sector, when factoring in...
Caixin Media
06.14.12Uproar over Aborted Fetus Photo
{vertical_photo_right}A Shaanxi Province woman provoked an uproar with an online posting of a photo showing her with her seven-month-old fetus after what she said was a forced abortion.The gruesome photo was reposted across the Internet in China,...
Environment
06.11.12The Diplomacy of Air Pollution
from chinadialogue
On June 5, World Environment Day, China’s environment ministry published its annual “state of the environment” report as normal. But this year, the launch attracted unusual levels of attention thanks to a statement from vice minister Wu...
Viewpoint
06.11.12Dirty Air and Succession Jitters Clouding Beijing’s Judgment
Last week the Chinese government accused the U.S. Embassy and consulates of illegally interfering in China’s domestic affairs by publishing online hourly air-quality information collected from their own monitoring equipment. (While the critiques...
Media
06.11.12A Great Massacre, a Great Earthquake, and a Great Famine
The head of the Gansu branch of People’s Daily, Lin Zhibo, provoked the ire of many netizens for remarks he made regarding the Great Famine on his Weibo account. Lin claimed that in many of the villages in Anhui and Henan (the two provinces that...
Media
06.11.12Did A CCTV Anchor’s Outburst Even Matter?
Yang Rui, a host on China Central Television's (CCTV) English-language channel, called on the Public Security Bureau via Sina Weibo on May 16 to “clean out foreign trash, wipe out foreign snake heads (human smugglers), root out foreign spies,...
Environment
06.08.12In Ecuador, Home Truths for China
from chinadialogue
“We need to make contact with the Chinese media as urgently as possible.” I was on my university campus in New York when I received this call for help from an Ecuadorean NGO on March 5.Some 4,000 kilometers south, in Quito, the Chinese embassy was...
Media
06.08.12Students Tear Up Books Before Big Exam
The gaokao, China’s annual National Higher Education Entrance Examination, is known for being extremely difficult and a stressful rite of passage for Chinese students. Due to the society’s traditional emphasis on education, many Chinese people still...
Caixin Media
06.08.12Road Show Media Bandits Squeeze IPO Hopefuls
Buying media silence is a common first step toward an initial public offering in China that siphons billions of yuan every year from companies seeking investors in Shanghai and Shenzhen.The phenomenon has been documented by the China Securities...
Environment
06.07.12What’s Coming Out of China’s Taps
from chinadialogue
China’s urbanites use a lot of water. Every day, more than 4,000 water-treatment plants supply 60 million tons of water to 400 million people living in Chinese cities. Despite the impressive figures, the water industry is grappling with widespread...
Media
06.07.12An Absent Presence
In Chan Koonchung’s dystopian science fiction novel The Fat Years, set in China in 2013, the whole month of Feburary 2011 has disappeared from people’s memory. In reality, the month that is closest to being spirited away is the month of June 1989...
Media
06.06.12In the News: Fact vs. Rumor
China-focused news editors have had numerous causes for celebration in the past few months. The various scandals surrounding the dethronement of Bo Xilai, the dramatic nighttime escape of blind activist Chen Guancheng, and the upcoming Party...
Postcard
06.06.12The Lesser Wall
There is no such place as Manchuria, but the word still resonates like a bell struck a century before. The region is now more prosaically called dongbei—the northeast—yet its contemporary toponyms sing of its imperial past, when it was the homeland...
Environment
06.05.12Hot Air?
It has been a busy season for U.S. diplomatic activity in China. Given the tensions aroused by U.S. involvement in the Bo Xilai scandal and the flight of the blind activist Chen Guangcheng, perhaps it should come as no surprise that even relatively...
Culture
06.05.12The Thinker
from Chutzpah!
The SunHe could still recall his feelings the first time he saw the Siyun Mountain Observatory thirty-four years ago, when the ambulance crossed the mountain ridge and the main peak appeared in the distance, its domed telescope roofs reflecting the...
Culture
06.04.12But Some of Us Are Looking at the Stars
from Chutzpah!
The wild nature of a realist The moment that someone decides to write, if it’s truly miraculous, is often likened to a “flash of inspiration.” Haruki Murakami’s description of such a moment is a classic example, and whether true or not, it has a...
Media
06.04.12Food Paradise or Hell: A New Documentary Sparks Debate
A seven-part documentary on China’s food culture, “A Bite of China” (which translated literally means “China on the Tip of the Tongue”) premiered on the main channel of China Central Television (CCTV-1) on May 14, 2012 and became an instant...
Environment
06.02.12A Fallacy of Steel and Glass
from chinadialogue
Among its many environmental challenges, China faces an enormous increase in energy consumption by buildings over the coming decades. Bricks and mortar already account for 25% of China’s total primary energy consumption, but are currently consuming...
Media
06.02.12On Weibo: Cultural Revolution Suicides
As people across China took part in the June 1 Children’s Day campaigns to, among other things, remember the millions of “left-behind” children in the countryside, some netizens on Weibo spent the time reflecting on another, seemingly bygone, era...
Media
05.31.12Godwin’s Law with Chinese Characteristics
This winter writer-blogger-race car-driver Han Han found himself facing charges of plagiarism from celebrated fraud-buster Fang Zhouzi. Both Han and Fang have huge followings among China’s microbloggers. And their personal disagreement soon...
Media
05.31.12Zuckerberg’s CCTV Cameo
Chinese social media outlets lit up after sharp-eyed viewers caught Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg making a cameo appearance on Chinese Police, a documentary series produced by China Central Television (CCTV). Just a few second long, the footage shows...
Caixin Media
05.31.12Heading Deep for the First Time
On May 9, China National Offshore Oil Corp.’s (CNOOC) first deepwater drilling platform began operating in the South China Sea. The world-class vessel is stationed in the Liwan 6-1-1 field, about 320 kilometers southeast of Hong Kong, in waters...
Viewpoint
05.30.12The Sweet and the Sour in China-U.S. Relations
At this very hour, one early May, just shy of a half century ago, I married a girl from Shanghai and we launched our joint adventure.Ever since, Bette Bao and I have practiced the precept of Adam Smith—division of labor. She manages our finances and...
Environment
05.30.12We’re All Farmers Now
from chinadialogue
At a monthly “friends of farming” dinner held by Green Heartland, an NGO based in Chengdu, west China, Chen Xia quietly reads an ode to the land against light background music. It’s a simple thanksgiving ceremony the hosts conduct before leaving the...
Media
05.29.12Patriots or Traitors?
In Chinese, to be patriotic is to ai guo, literally “to love [one’s] country.” But what does it really mean to love your country? Does it mean unconditional support for your country’s government, warts and all? Or is there more room for nuance—can...
Caixin Media
05.28.12Rail Builders Shift Interest to Overseas Mines
After a three-year wait, China Railway Construction Corp. Ltd. (CRCC) recently won permission to launch a major copper mining project in Ecuador.The production agreement signed April 25 by Ecuador’s government and Corriente Resources, a Canadian...
Caixin Media
05.25.12Hard Lesson for China Concept-Stock Investors
Imagine discovering on your first day as a new CEO that your employer is merely a shell that may be destined for a shameful delisting on the Nasdaq Stock Market.That’s what happened recently to ChinaCast Education Corp. CEO Feng Yiyi, who is now...
Caixin Media
05.25.12Policeman Burned for Dealing With the Devil
On March 17, the Chenzhou Public Security Bureau announced Huang Bailian had been removed as head of the police department’s drug squad.Huang offered a simple explanation for his sacking: “This is retaliation.”Three years earlier Huang, who is forty...
Media
05.25.12Can CCTV Become the Next Al Jazeera?
In a recent piece published in the Columbia Journalism Review, Sambuddha Mitra Mustafi assesses the early stages of China's multibillion dollar efforts to expand its domestic media empire onto the global stage. Just this year, CCTV launched two...
Environment
05.24.12Unplugging from China
from chinadialogue
Apparent preparations by US energy giant AES Corporation to withdraw from China have raised eyebrows lately. Earlier this year, it emerged that the firm—one of the world’s biggest independent power generators—had engaged an investment bank to sell...
Media
05.24.12TV Show Catches Flak for its Criticism of Contestants Who Have Lived Abroad
The gameshow Fei Ni Mo Shu (Only You) has a pretty straightforward premise: a contestant steps onto a stage next to the host and introduces him/herself to a panel of twelve bosses of major companies who sit in highly extravagant throne-like chairs...
Media
05.24.12Under the WeiboScope
With more than 300 million registered users, the popular microblogging service Sina Weibo—sometimes called the Chinese Twitter—can offer unique insights into the quotidian musings of Chinese netizens. One way to sort through the barrage of...
Caixin Media
05.23.12Identity Crisis Rattles Volvo’s Chinese Owner
New models bearing the Chinese-owned Volvo badge shared a luxury spotlight at the Beijing International Auto Show in April with perennial stars Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Lexus.But behind the diamond-studded presentation was confusion over the legal...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.22.12China’s Carbon Market Challenge
chinadialogue
A big question mark still hangs over the accuracy of China’s energy data, in particular its data on coal, use of which is highly decentralised. Without industry-level figures, the ability of local governments to produce reliable energy statistics is...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.22.12Ruihua Popsicles Possibly Tainted, Production Halted
Global Times
Ruihua Old Popsicle, which sells around 50,000 units per day for 1 yuan each, mostly in tourist sites, contains bacteria 1,767 times higher than that stipulated in the national standards for cold beverages, according to the Beijing News.
Viewpoint
05.20.12Chen Guangcheng: A Hopeful Breakthrough?
The arrival of the celebrated Chinese rights activist, Chen Guangcheng in the U.S. after years of prison and house arrest, raises the larger question of what the whole incident will come to mean in terms of the status of dissidents in China and in U...
Media
05.18.12Hong Kong Movie Star Now a Motivational Speaker
Nicholas Tse—the famous young Hong Kong singer, actor, and musician—is known for portraying irresponsible young rebels. People think that's what he's like in real life. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology invited Tse to be a...
Media
05.18.12Drunken Brit Assaults Chinese Woman in Beijing
A drunken foreigner was caught sexually assaulting a Chinese woman in Beijing near the Xuanwumen subway station. Pedestrians stopped him and it ended in a fight. This video shows the initial confrontation with the foreigner and then jumps to the...
Environment
05.18.12Europe Can Do Better
from chinadialogue
Since 2005, the European Union and China have sought to develop dialogue and cooperation in the area of climate-change policy. This has taken place primarily within the framework of the EU-China Partnership on Climate Change, agreed at the 2005 EU-...
Caixin Media
05.18.12Near Three Gorges Dam, the Exodus Continues
Walls inside Zhang Haomin’s home in Zhenxi Township, in Chongqing, started cracking in 2008, around the time the reservoir behind the new Three Gorges Dam neared capacity.“Early on, the cracks were small,” said Zhang, whose home is about three...
Caixin Media
05.18.12Demography and Destiny
China is facing a demographic reckoning that is approaching a nightmare.For thirty years, the government has been obsessed with keeping population growth down, often resorting to late-term abortions and other brutal measures. The panic now is that...
Caixin Media
05.18.12Message in a Bottle for Spirits Maker Moutai
A glass of Feitian Moutai packs a wallop, which is one reason why the 106-proof baijiu is a hit among influential government officials.They also like Feitian Moutai because a single bottle, thanks to special arrangements between state agencies and...
Caixin Media
05.18.12Era Ends for China’s Legendary Stock Picker
Investors who closely followed the stock picks of one of China’s most successful brokers are wandering in the wilderness—and wondering what will happen next to their unemployed luminary Wang Yawei.In April, and without warning, Wang resigned from...
Media
05.17.12Villagers Loot Spilled Watermelons From Truck After Car Crash
Two trucks collided on the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway in Yueyang, Hunan Province. While local firemen worked to rescue the drivers stuck in their vehicles, people from a nearby village arrived on the scene to loot watermelons that had fallen...
Media
05.16.12IV Drips Sustain Students Studying for College Entrance Examination
The Xiaogan No.1 High School in China's Hubei Province allegedly hooked students up to intravenous drips filled with amino acids to sustain them while studying for the country's notoriously difficult national college entrance exams:A photo...
Media
05.16.12Du Fu Is Very Busy
The 1300th birthday anniversary of the great Chinese poet Du Fu will be celebrated this year. An illustration of Du Fu in Chinese literature textbooks has recently been the inspiration for a spat of creative graffiti and videos. In them, he has been...
Environment
05.14.12Keeping an Eye on China’s Bankers
from chinadialogue
Last August, a major pollution story broke in China: 5,000 tonnes of toxic chromium tailings had been dumped near a Yunnan reservoir, contaminating water supplies and killing livestock. Worse revelations were to come. The company behind the incident...