Today's Links: The May 8th Tragedy, a regular Olympics show, and the Hangzhou "rich kid" who killed a poor one
- Readings on 1999's "May 8th Tragedy" [The China Beat] The China Beat compiles readings on 1999's "May 8th Tragedy," when NATO missiles were fired into the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three PRC nationals and sparking protests all around the world from angry Chinese citizens. Included are two news accounts from the time - one by the BBC and one by CNN, a Salon.com piece by a Beida foreign student and two later analysis of the situation.
- China eyes regular Olympic show [Financial Times] "Less than a year after China hosted the Olympics, Beijing is planning to put its stunningly choreographed opening ceremony back on as a regular evening show at the “Bird’s Nest”, the main stadium built for the games... Zhang Hengli, vice-president of the National Stadium Company that now runs the Bird’s Nest, said: “We want to put on a regular evening show like the opening ceremony. But that will take longer to realise [than other performances in the works for the stadium] because it requires a huge amount of money. We need to find an investor and deal with potential issues of intellectual property of the International Olympic Committee.”"
- Communists Can’t Outspend Capitalists as China Jobless Increase [Bloomberg] "Demand for work is so high that 5,000 students jostled at a Shanghai employment fair in March for 400 jobs available in the funeral industry. One woman with a management degree applied for a position as a mortician’s assistant to “make up the faces of the dead,” state media reported. The attraction: It paid 4,000 yuan ($585) a month, equal to what she might have earned in an office job two years ago."
- Hangzhou, Whose Paradise Is It? [Hecaitou's blog - translated by ESWN] "A Mitsubishi race car; a modified vehicle; a rich young man. These three factors would have been enough to arouse the wrath of the people. Some day, the driver Hu Bin's biggest regret may be that he hit a Zhejiang University graduate. Tan Zhuo is a typical new migrant in Hangzhou... He was prepared to develop slowly, saving a bit of money at a time to eventually buy an apartment, get married and settle down. This kind of life is neither lofty nor lowly, neither good nor bad. But for many other students, it would be their Hangzhou dream too to get a job there and settle down. But now a speeding car driven by a rich young man has destroyed that Hangzhou dream. When the people read in the news report that "the person who caused the accident had a bad attitude," they were enraged."
- How the Family of a Dissident Fled China [NYTimes] "Ms. Geng’s tale stands out not just because it involves a cinematic escape, with elements like stalled motorcycles and nonstop travel with little food or sleep. It is remarkable, human rights activists say, because it reveals how China uses family members of dissidents as leverage against them. And it shows the extreme measures a small number of political opponents will take to deny the authorities that leverage. Ms. Geng insists, though, that her husband knew nothing of her plans."
- Baidu’s CCTV Ad Spending Raises Questions Among Web Critics [WSJ] "Chinese Internet search giant Baidu.com Inc. (BIDU) paid 40 million yuan, or about $5.6 million, in advertising in the first quarter, with the lion’s share going to state broadcaster China Central Television. Its online critics now wonder where the spending was an effort to get into CCTV’s good graces."
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