Results tagged “france”

Oh thank goodness! We nearly had a heart attack this morning when we read this chilling article (maybe just chilling to all of us who enjoy comparably cheap imported French cheeses) in the Economist noting that two big shareholders were reportedly pushing Carrefour to sell off its China and Brazil businesses. At least according to the company, it's not true.

Are we about to enter Auction Relics Drama: The Sequel? This time around, French auction house Beaussant-Lefevre put up a jade Chinese imperial seal on the block. The piece, also originally from the Summer Palace, is said to be worth between 300,000 to 400,000 euros (2.7 million RMB to 3.6 million RMB).

• France probes degree fraud [Straits Times] "FRANCE is investigating claims that hundreds of Chinese students bribed officials to secure diplomas in a corruption scandal at a French university... Prosecutors in Toulon launched an investigation last month after receiving a tip-off alleging that Chinese students were being sold degrees at the Institute of Business Administation (IAE) in the south-eastern town of Toulon."
• U.S. again declines to brand China FX manipulator [Reuters] "The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday declined to label China a currency manipulator, retreating from tough talk last year when a campaigning Barack Obama said Beijing had kept its currency's exchange rate unfairly low. In a semiannual report to Congress on currency practices of key trading partners, the Treasury said all were suffering from the current global economic downturn, but said none manipulate their currencies for trade advantage."
• Pirate Bay Loses A Lawsuit; Entertainment Industry Loses An Opportunity [Techdirt] "Well, the verdict has come down in the trial against The Pirate Bay in Sweden, and it appears The Pirate Bay has been found guilty and each of the defendants has been sentenced to a year in jail and told to pay $3.6 million in damages (less than a third of what the entertainment industry asked for)... The ultimate problem, of course, is that the entertainment industry still (amazingly) thinks this is a legal issue, not a business model one. It can win as many legal battles as it wants, but in thinking it's a legal issue, it will never recognize how its business models need to change."

Did you know China had a burgeoning parkour scene? We didn't either until 56minus1 discovered a bunch of online Chinese parkour groups, communities and forums.

Sina.com had a survey up about the recent Christie's auction, in which two bronze animal heads looted from the Summer Palace in the 1719th century fetched 15.7 million euros. The survey results, translated into English, were thus:

Sometimes your new electronic gadget isn't as new as you'd think it would be. One patron of the Carrefour in Jinqiao got a bit of a shock when he opened his “brand new” camcorder and found over 30 minutes of the Jinqiao Carrefour staff's Spring Festival Christmas party on it. Source:Jonathan Chambers

The Dalai Lama has been keeping the guys at the Chinese Foreign Ministry working overtime lately with his eight day tour around Europe. Last week, after telling Nigerians in Lagos that "sex invariably spells trouble", the Dalai Lama flew to Prague to meet Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek and democratic hero Vaclav Havel. He then hopped over to Brussels to meet Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme and to address the European Parliament, which led China to scrap a summit with the EU at the last minute. Two days ago in Warsaw, the D.L. was given a rousing welcome by Polish anti-communist hero and Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Wałęsa, as well as Gdansk mayor Pawel Adamowicz. We're not sure if the Polish premier Donald Tusk got to meet the Dalai Lama eventually but he did say he "would be honoured" if he had the opportunity to do so. And then this latest image of the Dalai Lama draping French President Nicolas Sarkozy with the traditional Tibetan kata totally had the Chinese foreign ministry and media railing against France. It will be interesting to see how French businesses in China will suffer from the new fallout and whether there will be a fresh round of anti-French boycotts. While it's unlikely that China would penalise the entire European Union for the warm welcome it gave to the D.L., it's not hard to imagine all the above-named nations taking a hit, with France bearing the brunt of it all as it currently holds the rotating EU presidency.

Recliners made by the Dongguan-based company Linkwise are causing cases of eczema, stinging allergic rashes and infections among French customers who bought them. The problems were traced to the use of the chemical, dimethyl fumarate, which is used to prevent mould and fungus on the chairs. The French distributor Conforama has since severed its business ties with Linkwise and told its suppliers to stop all use of the chemical. Out of the 38,000 Linkwise chairs it sold, it says customers have returned about 800 so far. A rash of cases has also cropped up in Britain, Sweden and Finland. One British attorney is now representing 1,300 customers and suing Linkwise for compensation. [Source]

Benjamin Boukpeti: Picked up the first medal for Togo bronze in the men’s slalom kayak event but the French-born sportsman has only been to Togo once as a child to visit his paternal grandmother! According to Reuters, Boukpeti "only decided to compete for Togo when it became clear he was too old to make it into the far more competitive French team".

Oh, the irony!

President Sarkozy, the first world leader to say he would not attend the Beijing Olympics as a way of protesting China's handling of the Tibetan protests in May, has eaten his words after meeting Chinese President Hu Jintao at the ongoing G8 summit, saying he would attend the opening ceremony after all.

~ It's not 'Come if you want,' it's basically 'You're not welcome."

With opinion polls indicating that Chinese sentiment towards France has greatly deteriorated after the Paris Olympic torch pro-Tibet protests, it's not completely surprising that tourism from Beijing to France has fallen by 70 percent in the past few weeks. But suspicions have arisen that Beijing's official tourism body has taken measures to stop the city's potential travelers from patronizing France. "We were given the assurance that there had never been an order for tourism agencies to boycott France," French ambassador to China Herve Ladsous announced in a press briefing (quoted here in Reuters UK). The decrease in Chinese travelers can partly be explained by an official order discouraging overseas travel after the recent devastation in Sichuan and the upcoming excitement of the Olympics. Ladsous, however, has voiced doubts:

But there is more than that as France has been more directly touched and it is clear that the fall of two-thirds relates to Beijing, whereas in Shanghai, where the authorities did not give any instruction, the visas continued to be delivered at the same speed as before.

Travel agencies in Beijing have been asked to withdraw France as a tourist destination, starting this week.

Depending on where you read your news, the nation-wide boycott of, and protests against, French supermarket chain Carrefour in China were either a well-attended show of nationalistic pride or were over-shadowed by the bargains on offer inside the stores. Angered by events surrounding the Olympic torch relay in Paris last month and by President Sarkozy declining to rule out a boycott of the games in Beijing in August, the protests had been arranged through on-line forums and text messaging.

Following up on our previous post entitled "Attack on an American volunteer by anti-Carrefour mob in Zhuzhou, Hunan," we were contacted today by James Galvin, the unnamed American volunteer mentioned in the story which has now gone on to receive coverage by the Associated Press. In his email, Galvin provided his first-hand account of the alleged incident outside a Carrefour Sunday night in Hunan Province. He feels the story has gotten blown out of proportion. He called the initial email summary of the incident submitted to Shanghaiist by one of his fellow volunteers "sensationalist," adding the colleague "had only seen me for thirty seconds. That should have been enough to see I was not 'cut up.'" Shanghaiist ran the initial post on the incident on April 22 after receiving a copy of an official email from the volunteer organization's China field director — which spoke of a "mob mentality" and "punches" being thrown — that appeared to corroborate the initial version of events we were given. We had also seen an email from a U.S. Vice-Consul in Beijing saying she had spoken with the field director and that the Embassy was "highly concerned about what happened." We felt it was newsworthy and posted the story as a word of caution to our readers in various parts of China. We updated the story after the initial tipster contacted us again saying he was worried his account was "factually inaccurate in many ways."

                        

We're somewhat late bringing this to you, but yes, over the weekend, anti-French protests took place over the weekend all over China outside Carrefour stores in Hefei, Qingdao, Wuhan, Shenzhen, Xuzhou, Zhengzhou, Luoyang, Jinan and Kunming. Although these were mainly anti-French anti-Carrefour protests, they were described by People's Daily as "protests against Tibetan independence".

From www.aujourdhuilachine.com:

French athletes will not be allowed to wear their “For a better world” badge – meant to show their commitment to Human Rights, during the Beijing Games, said the French Sports & National Olympic Committee (CNOFS) President Henri Sérandour.

Continue reading "2008 Olympic Games: French athletes won't be allowed to wear their “For a better world” badge"

First it was Coca-Cola. Now Carrefour, too, has been hit. The video on the right shows a confrontation between a (lone?) woman protestor outside Carrefour in Beijing and a PSB officer (h/t to PandaPassport). Jason Leow of the Wall Street Journal writes:

Some Chinese citizens, angry over foreign criticism of their country's policies in Tibet, are calling for boycotts of at least two European retailers for purportedly supporting the Dalai Lama, the latest sign of growing tension between China and the West ahead of the Olympics.

Continue reading "Nationalist netizens call for boycott of Carrefour and other French brands"

A 1993 nude photo of Carla Bruni, French President Sarkozy's wife, has been sold at Christie's in NYC for $91,000 to an unnnamed Chinese art collector. A Telegraph article describes the pic:

The portrait shows a younger Miss Bruni gazing thoughtfully into the camera with nothing but her crossed hands to cover her modesty.

And here's an assortment of pictures that will give you a good sense of what we saw and experienced:

Editor's note: Former Shanghaiist contributor Hélène Franchineau was present at the Olympic torch relay in Paris earlier today and tells us of what she saw and heard.

Do films with titles like "Feathers of Dongtan" and "Sounds. Breaths" give you a tingle in your special area? If not, fret not, there's still some time to develop that acquired taste which is promotional films for really-big-Chinese-events. "Vision Shanghai", like "Vision Beijing," is going to feature documentary films by famous directors, thought the names of those directors have yet to be released. However, Shanghai Film Group has announced its next Expo film, a full-length doc by Jia Zhangke. We've been hearing about this intermittently for awhile, and whatever our reservations about promo films, we're still curious to see what Jia's up to with this film.The article says that trailers are being shown on TV soon, but we haven't seen anything new on the video-sharing sites.

By Julien Bertrand: On his first official visit to China, French President Nicolas Sarkozy must have been dizzy, witnessing the signing of contracts worth 20 billion euros in total, comprising of 160 Airbus aircrafts, two EPR nuclear reactors (to be built in Taishan, Guangdong, by 2014) and signal equipment for Shanghai’s future 36-kilometer metro line #10, a long-awaited deal between Alstom and Shanghai Metro that will link New Jiangwan Town to Hongqiao Airport. In an...

Honestly, when China threw a shitfit after German chancellor Merkel met the Dalai Lama, we really didn't give a hoot, in part because we've given up on seeing our dream of Tibetan secession realized in our lifetimes. But one thing you might not have known is that this diplomatic contretemps spilled over to affect our fair city. There was supposed to be a week long symposium sponsored by Der Spiegel at the Duolun Museum...

We read a fair amount of China-related news, and it's hard not to get a bit apathetic about it all, since so much of it seems to revolve around the same few topics. Slate's article, however, touches on something we don't normally hear about: China's tomato products industry.:China, it turns out, now grows more tomatoes for processing—the kind that get turned into ketchup, pasta sauce, salsa—than any place in the world besides California, and maybe...