Results tagged “government”

Is there anywhere in the world's most populous nation where there is absolutely no one? As it turns out, yes, there is! In the southwestern part of the Inner Mongolia region lies the spanking new and ultra-modern Ordos City (鄂尔多斯), which government officials have raised from the desert in just five years with tonnes of public money. The only problem is, nobody's moved in from the old Ordos City, located just 30 kilometres away.

If you've somehow avoided the news all weekend, the United States just passed a bill on healthcare reform, which is the first step in a long line towards actual change. Less well known (probably because of the lack of flashy partisan politics) is China's attempt to reform it's own healthcare system, which is a daunting task in its own way.

After years of back and forth, it looks like Shanghai Disneyland has been given the go-ahead. According to news sources, the Shanghai Municipal Government Informatin offices announced the deal's approval early this morning. While details still have to be worked out between the mouse and the ministries, it seems like a pretty set deal.

The saga of problems and setbacks that China has faced in attempting to implement the controversial Green Dam internet censorship software just keeps on going. After postponing the software's release indefinitely this summer, the government has attempted to find ways to censor the 'net without provoking massive public outrage. Which is funny, because the government is sneaking around trying to do things on the internet without anyone noticing, just like us!

Looks like it's not just the Yunnan government that's recognized the power of the internet. Today, Premier Wen Jia Bao went online to talk to netizens in a chat jointly hosted by Xinhua and the central government. According to Xinhua, Grandpa Wen began internetting with the country at 3pm and responded to questions about the financial crisis, unemployed migrant workers, Sino-U.S. Relations and - surprisingly - free speech.

“领导，辛苦了！"

The local government in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province has just passed what looks like a wide-reaching law making it illegal for people to publish someone else's 'private information' on the Internet. Offenders can be fined up to 5,000 yuan and could be barred from using the Internet for half a year! The news comes one month after a district housing bureau chief in Nanjing was dismissed after netizens posted photos of him wearing a RMB100,000 watch and smoking a RMB150 a pack cigarettes. The pictures spread like wildfire on the web because those items were seen to be beyond the means of someone living on a civil servant's modest wages.

To spread the Lunar New Year cheer, the central government has decided to distribute RMB9 billion worth of hongbao's (or red packets) to 74 million of the poorest residents in cities and villages as one-time disbursements meant to help them tide through the hard times. Villagers will receive RMB100 each, city dwellers RMB150 each, and those on state pensions/subsidies RMB180 each. All this money is coming straight from the Ministry of Finance and the central government has already given strict instructions to governments at all levels to disburse the monies in a "just, fair and transparent" manner.

Some reporter from Henan TV Station went into the public service hall of Neihuang Country (内黄县) and captured these images of civil servants playing online poker, knitting and even sleeping soundly in their armchairs when they should be working. That service standards in government bodies remain poor is to be expected, all the more when you're talking about a small and relatively poor county of just 700,000 in inland China. What took us more by surprise was the tone that this journalist used to shame and put down the already-embarrassed civil servants in front of the camera. In comments by Youku users translated by Youku Buzz:
• “Why did the journalist talk like a policeman?”
• “How can the reporter be so cocky?”
• “He will be beaten down by some gangsters tomorrow on his way home.”

Move over Pyongyang. The county government in Henan Province's impoverished Tongbai County (桐柏县), population 420,000, has built itself a massive building with a very expansive square that even the Shanghai municipal government could only dream of. The entire compound appears to be designed in accordance with fengshui principles with giant gates and sculptures of mythical creatures that locals have never even heard of before.

The President of China Investment Corp, Gao Xiqing, has made his way to the U.S. with Wei Christianson, CEO and Managing Director of Morgan Stanley China, sparking rumours that the Chinese sovereign wealth fund may buy up to 49% of the beleaguered investment bank. Gao has been scheduled to meet Morgan Stanley executives in San Francisco after the New York-based company plunged 42% after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America.

Look what we received in the mail today! It seems that Shanghai authorities are taking a creative step forward in helping residents to consume less salt with this nifty package. Encased is a small plastic spoon that holds 2 grams of salt (as seen inverted at the top of the handle) and on the package, it advises residents to consume only 3 spoonfuls of salt a day to prevent high blood pressure. On the flip side, it details suggestions on how to lessen salt consumption when cooking and for residents over 35 years old to test their blood pressure.

• The World Expo Tunnel, which stretches beneath the Huangpu River, connecting Pudong and Puxi reached its full length on August the 20th: it's 2.67 kilometers long, and located 1.117 kilometers below the river.
• The soccer World Cup qualifier match between North and South Korea has been moved from Pyongyang to Shanghai, because the North had refused to play the anthem or fly the flag of its opponent (technically the two Koreas are still at war). The match is scheduled for September 10, sounds like an interesting game, eh?
• Migrant workers in Shanghai will be able to claim unemployment benefits and have the right to get health benefits while they are employed. This was stated by the department of safety in labor this week. Welcome news for a group who are definitely in need of a few more rights.

Yin Guoguan, former deputy director of the Shanghai Housing, Land and Resources Administration Bureau was sentenced to death for taking bribes in return for real estate approvals. His sentence will be suspended for two years. The IHT reports that usually these sentences are commuted to life imprisonment. His wife also got seven years imprisonment for her role in the corruption.

An interesting inside look at how China's state-run spin machine operates from the Sydney Morning Herald. Wonder how they got their hands on this.

The Shanghai municipal government has flat-out denied that F visa applications have been suspended as earlier reports in foreign media suggested, saying that "the reports did not conform to the truth". While admitting that "some related authorities adjusted the procedures of visa applications ahead of the Beijing Olympics in order to forestall possible security threats", a spokesperson has said that over 500 applications per day have been processed in the first half of this year, a rise of more than 170 percent from last year. [Shanghai Daily]

We know — the on-again-off-again Disney Shanghai deal is getting kinda bawwwrrrriiiing — but latest news has it that the deal could include a major media component that would leave other media companies salivating and give Disney unrivalled access to the highly sought-after Chinese market:

The joint venture agreement would give Disney a huge advantage over U.S. media rivals by allowing it to bypass foreign film import quotas and summer and holiday blackout periods, as well as television censorship, both imposed by the central government.

Continue reading "Disney Shanghai to include media deal?"

Yesterday we heard that authorities in Sichuan were offering hush money to parents who lost children in the May earthquake. The story has been circulating widely, and more details about the government’s attempts to placate parents have come to the fore. Not only are officials apparently going door to door offering pay outs of around 60,000 RMB, they’re sweetening the deal by adding more incentives to keep up the harmonious front. The list includes pensions, free life insurance and relaxing the one child policy to allow parents of children disabled by collapsing schools to have another baby.

China Digital Times points us to these two videos of forced evictions by the local government in Jilin Province's Ji'an City (集安市) that are quickly spreading throughout the Chinese internets. The videos, dated May 29, 4am, were found on Sina but subsequently copied by a journalist from Boxun.com (a dissident site) and posted up to foreign video hosting sites since they would soon be censored from the Chinese internet for being too unharmonious. One protest banner put up by residents at the start of the clip reads:

Resisting corruption and the collusion of government and businessmen;

Continue reading "Videos: Forced evictions in Ji'an, Jilin Province"

In an attempt to prevent any kind of market fluctuations and “sell offs” leading up to the Beijing Olympics, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), China’s securities watchdog, distributed a notice to fund managers, including Sino-foreign joint ventures, warning fund employees not to say anything publicly that could harm the stability of the market.

Local officials are still trying to strike the proper balance between transparency and the traditional Chinese methods of information dissemination (or lack thereof) which we have all become so familiar with — namely, "monitoring," "controlling" and "blocking."

The China Digital Times leads us to a story in Jianghua, in Hunan Province, where local party officials are hanging signs throughout the city claiming that some forms of petitioning the government are illegal. The signs declare, "If you petition illegally, the penalty is imprisonment," or "Attack those who don’t petition legally," or “Wage a war for standard, orderly petitioning." The Digital Times suggests that this is the local government's response to a central government order: "keep track of key public complaint cases until they are solved." Given the ambiguous nature of the central government's edict, it's no surprise that the signs in Jianghua are equally vague. As the AP reports,

The latest order to resolve conflicts made no mention of specific instructions on how to do so — and appeared to follow an all too common trend whereby the government strives to appear responsive without exposing the party to direct criticism or making officials more accountable to the public.

As usual, Roland Soong of EastSouthWestNorth is on top of the incident, busy piecing together all the information he can find. He informs us that Weng'an is now a sensitive word, the uncle of the female student is still alive, and the body of the student is still resting in a refrigerated coffin awaiting autopsy despite this popularly-believed story. Soong also observes that the Xinhua story (which all Chinese media are made to carry) opens more questions than it answers, paving the way for all sorts of unsubstantiated rumours to dominate public opinion.

Several thousand rioters have gathered in Guizhou's Weng'an County, torched a police station, ransacked government buildings and overturned police cars, after allegations of a cover-up over a 15 year old girl's death blew up. Ming Pao reports the son of the county's vice-deputy mayor had raped and murdered the girl along with another youth and tossed her body into the Ximen River. Police only detained the suspects for five hours and released them without charge. EastSouthWestNorth says unconfirmed, conflicting reports are now swirling around the Internet but has several telling pictures which indicate a large proportion of the population was out on the streets. [Xinhua] [Reuters] [AP] [AFP] [Youtube videos 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Among driving rain, rough winds and other remnants of yesterday’s tropical storm, the streets of Hong Kong are teeming today with the usual bustle of high-powered businessmen and equally serious shoppers. But there’s something new on the streets of the island metropolis: Chinese patriotism. According to a recent survey by the Public Opinion Program at the University of Hong Kong, a 58% of Hong Kongers of Chinese descent now identify themselves as Chinese or Chinese Hong Kong citizens. The number may still be only a bare majority, but it shows significant growth of PRC patriotism — when the annual survey was first conducted in 1997, the year HK reverted to Chinese rule, only 18.6% identified as Chinese nationals.

Jesus seems to be making a comeback in the PRC. Since the introduction of Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox missionaries to China, many of them to Shanghai, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, Christianity has been a popular minority religion. While practice abated during Mao’s hay day, China has experienced a resurgence in past years. Just two weeks ago, we reported that Orthodox priests were allowed to lead a service in Shanghai for the first time in over four decades. An article by the Chicago Tribune shows this incident may be indicative of a larger trend of successful Christian advocacy, some of which may challenge the Chinese government’s role as supreme authority over its citizens:

As China's Christian population has climbed to an estimated 70 million, a growing number of lawyers and scholars have converted to Christianity and turned their skills to the issue of religious freedom. They are teaming up with churches to challenge the government in court, suing for the rights they believe are guaranteed under China's constitution.

Continue reading "Jesus Christ Superstar! (and other religious news)"

Photo from Brian's Tree

With the upcoming Olympics and the subsequent global attention, the government obviously wants the nation to look its best, which in China sometimes translates to quashing dissent. Two European-based human rights groups working together as the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders recently published a report declaring that the government has stepped up attempts to quiet dissidents, citing four people arrested for Olympic Games protests, including Hu Jia, who was sentenced to three and a half years in jail for criticizing the government’s human rights violations. More from the AFP article:

In a foreword to the report, writer Wei Jingsheng wrote: "In particular, last year the Chinese Government's repression has rapidly upgraded, in an effort to make sure there is no dissident voices from the people during the 2008 Olympics."

Continue reading "A pre-Olympic dissident clampdown?"

ABC News: Athletes banned from Beijing opening ceremony

The last installment of Al Jazeera's series on China in the program People and Power investigates the Lhasa Express, the 4000 km train line linking Beijing with Lhasa. Exclusive interviews with members of the Tibetan government in exile and recently escaped Tibetan prisoners echo the familiar refrain that the Chinese government is encouraging a massive influx of Han Chinese to Tibet, but zero coverage of the flip side.