Results tagged “japan”

On Wednesday we told you about how the recent comments of Singapore's elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew made during his latest trip to the US have caused an uproar among Chinese netizens. Aside from his more controversial statements that Asia needs the United States to counterbalance a rising China and that the US needs to be "an important part" of any new East Asian architecture, Lee also gave a wide-ranging interview to the Charlie Rose Show of the PBS network. China featured heavily in the 60 minute interview which kicked off with Lee's proclamation that the United States may have half a century left as the world's dominant power. In the new world order, said Lee, the US would have to make space for China and India at the top table of the world. For the next hour or so, sit back with us and gaze into Lee Kuan Yew's crystal ball as he looks back into the past and divines the future. As always, if you're in China and still not able to watch Youtube videos, now is the time to get your VPN. Meanwhile, a full transcript of this interview is available here.

Wouldn't Sting be proud: China's new expo outreach plan is to put bottles with invitations to the expo into the sea, and let them float to neighboring countries where someone might pick them up, and decide to come. We guess this is China's SOS to the world: please, please come to the Expo! But since the message was in English, French and Chinese, and they sent them off towards Japan and South Korea, we have our doubts that it'll work.

This week Shanghai Cinemas are pleasing us with a new movie from the man called "Hong Kong's King of Comics", Wong Yuk-Long, also known as Tom Wong. Therefore, we'll use this week's Cinematheque as an excuse to go through some 漫画 (manhua) history.

• Regulation on puppy love sparks controversy [China.org.cn] "The first local regulation in China to list puppy love as "misconduct" and suggest parents reprimand and stop it has sparked controversy across the country. Heated discussions on the regulation has spread across media and websites nationwide, after the Regulation for the Protection of Minors of Heilongjiang Province, the first of its kind to tackle puppy love, was revised and adopted by the local legislature last month."
• Drugs Don’t Work for Half of China’s AIDS Patients, Study Says [Bloomberg] "Half of China’s AIDS patients stopped responding to treatment over five years and didn’t have access to the back-up drugs available in developed nations, researchers found. Among 48,785 HIV patients who received free treatment under a government program from 2002 to 2008, the drugs curbed AIDS- related deaths but failed to treat 50 percent of the group over the period, researchers led by Fujie Zhang at China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention found. The results are similar to those for other low- and middle-income countries, they said. "
• Chief of Google in China Leaving [NY Times] "In what is likely to be seen as a blow to Google’s ambitions in China, Kai-Fu Lee, the prominent head of the company’s operations there, is leaving to form a new venture. Google said in a news release early Friday in Beijing that Mr. Lee, who was president of Google Greater China and vice president for engineering, would leave the company in mid-September."

Organ trafficking stirs concern [Global Times] "The number of organ transplants from deceased donors in China is only 130 since the first case in 2003, one of the country's leading transplant experts said at a seminar yesterday. About 11,000 transplant operations are performed each year in China, including both living- and all deceased-donor transplantations, including executed prisoners, making the country the second-largest in the world to the US in total number. But that number it is far from enough to meet demand, Chen Zhonghua, the Chinese Medical Association's deputy director for transplanting, said…"

Despite weather reports that Typhoon Morakot would swing by our way (which triggered a rush of preparation for floods and damage) it... simply didn't. Yesterday was rainy and gross, but not any rainier and grosser than Shanghai weather normally tends to be. The same could not be said for other areas around Asia.

• Award Offers Expats Lower Taxes [Shanghai Daily] "Shanghai will launch a "financial talent award" soon to make the city more attractive to foreign financial specialists, said Fang Xinghai, director of the Shanghai Financial Services Office, yesterday. The award also allows for a lower tax burden for expatriate financial talents in Shanghai and aims to build the city into an international financial hub by 2020."
• Mindful of Japan, US expert urges caution on China [AFP] "The United States should avoid a formal partnership with China to address global problems as it would hamper the alliance with Japan, an influential US foreign-policy thinker told Congress Thursday."
• 'Excellent' migrant workers get Shanghai hukou [Global Times] "Li Ying, a sanitation worker from Jiangsu Province, was so happy to be given a hukou for Shanghai Wednesday she burst into tears in the police station. Li - who has worked in the city for the past 10 years - was among a group of 40 “National Excellent Migrating Workers” to be given the household registration certificates for the thriving city."

• Graduates retreat to rural China [Financial Times] "The Communist party has a long tradition of sending young intellectuals into China’s vast rural hinterland, often causing terrible suffering and disastrous economic consequences. But Chinese officials and analysts insist that, this time, things are different."
• Taxi agents threatened with violence [Shanghai Daily] "Wu Runyuan, a spokesman for the Shanghai Traffic Law Enforcement Team, said illegal taxi drivers had bribed janitors and the owners of small stores near the watchdog's office to tip them off when the traffic law enforcement team was going out on a raid. 'We even found a makeshift GPS system had been installed by a worker under one of our cars while it was in for routine repairs, so illegal drivers knew where the vehicle was at all times,' Wu said. 'Again, he was paid to do it.'"
• Chinese airline chief goes missing [Financial Times] "The head of a privately owned Chinese airline has disappeared after takeover talks with flag-carrier Air China broke down and Beijing grounded its fleet. The case is raising fears of a trend towards renationalisation in some sectors in China as state groups use their clout to swallow struggling private competitors."

Screw Shakespeare and forget that Chinese opera business - right now, preparations are underway to bring a sing-song version of Karl Marx's Das Kapital to the Shanghai theater.

The Travel Film Archive takes us on another journey back in time with this look at how life was like in 1938 in the then province of Manchuria (Manchukuo) under the Japanese.

If there's one business model that's sure to ride the current economic storm, it's a shop which sells nothing but useless gadgets.

• The Dalai Lama entertains the idea of himself going to hell and of his lineage coming to an end at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan. [China Rises]
• The WSJ's China Journal tells us of a "rare and violent strike" among cabbies in Chongqing yesterday protesting against fuel shortages and heavy fines.
• Sam Flemming of the China IWOM Blog tells us of Gome's launch of a tuangou (团购) or "group purchase" opportunity through the Chinese forum KDS. This is interesting because tuangou activities are usually initiated by consumers.

While others have been wondering what the Chinese FDA's been up to, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) has been busy at work — conducting vigilant checks on food imported from overseas to ensure food quality for China's 1.3 billion people. They've just announced that soy sauce and wasabi imported from three Japanese producers have been found to be tainted with toluene and ethyl acetate. So, relax guys! China is not the only one with food safety problems. Developed nations such as Japan regularly poison their own people too.

Shanghaiist has just returned home from the power-packed Open Web Asia conference in Seoul, Korea which bills itself — and is — the "first truly pan-Asia web technology event". We rubbed shoulders with some movers and shakers in the industry and came away from their presentations impressed with the amount of innovation originating out of Asia. While some international heavyweights like Jason Calacanis of Mahalo and Loic Le Meur of Seesmic fame spoke at the conference, it was really the lesser-known Asia-based folks that blew our minds away with their insight.

A group of kimono-clad geishas entertain passersby on the Nanjing Lu pedestrian street as part of a pile of fringe events in the ongoing Shanghai Tourism Festival.

The Olympics has come and gone without a hitch and while BOCOG officials can finally heave a sigh of relief, we have a few questions in our mind — Will people on the streets continue to be as friendly? Will counterfeit products be kept off the streets? Will it be as easy to get work visas as it was before all this Olympics hoopla came along? Japan's Fuji TV has the answers to one of the above questions in this new report on fake Olympic t-shirts being sold on the streets one day after the Olympic closing ceremony, and we quote from JapanProbe.com:

The t-shirts are being sold along with other popular counterfeit brand goods, and the sales are going on in broad daylight in front of the Bird’s Nest stadium that hosted the opening and closing ceremonies of the games. Foreign tourists are being sold the illegal goods in plain sight of police officers, who walk by without taking any action.

Continue reading "Just one day after the Olympics closes, the counterfeits are back"

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".

Two Japanese reporters Shinji Katsuta of Nippon Television Network Corp, and Shinzou Kawakita of the Tokyo Shimbun were briefly apprehended, beaten by police and forcibly taken to a border police facility while they were in Kashgar trying to report on the deadly attack which killed 16 policemen. After a protest by the Japanese government, the Kashgar police and the local foreign affairs department apologised to the Japanese reporters. Austin Ramzy of Time Magazine was also in Kashgar, and reports that he was on the same flight with a man that had lost his lower right leg and was strapped to a stretcher that flight attendants say was one of the border guards injured in the attack. This video, filed by Ramzy, shows the area around the police station where the attack took place.

A new study shows that China has a long way to go before it achieves respect as a multi-faceted power among its Asian neighbors. Conducted by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the East Asia Institute of South Korea, the study surveyed five East and Southeast Asian countries as well as the United States. It found that perceptions of China's "soft power" abilities (indirect and non-military) were considerably lower than that of the U.S. and Japan. The perceptions persist even though China has worked to build strong economic ties around Asia as well as leverage its position as Olympics host. The study did find, however, that a majority of those polled believed the August Olympics would greatly boost China's world prestige (although economic pundits like Robbert van Batenburg of Louis Capital Markets disagree).

This picture you see on the right taken during President Hu Jintao's meeting with Emperor Akihito during his trip to Japan (just before the earthquake struck) appeared on the front page of the May 9 edition of Jiefang Daily 《解放日报》[screenshot here just in case]. As you can see, President Hu is talking to the Emperor and Mrs Hu is talking to the Empress. Take a careful look. Do you see what's there coming out from under the First Lady's chair?

UPDATE, 18:09 The first Japanese relief workers are expected to leave tonight. A group of 60 earthquake specialists together with sniffer dogs will head to Sichuan over the next few days. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has appealed for earth-moving equipment to aid rescue efforts in the region. Many relief workers are currently sifting through the rubble with their hands according to ABC News. The latest official death toll stands at 19,500 but is expected to rise sharply over the coming days.

"China on Saturday warned its citizens against shopping at a leading Paris department store that wrongly accused a young Chinese couple of trying to pay with a fake banknote, state media said."

Japanese filmmaker Satoru Mizushima (水島総) was not too happy about Nanking, the American documentary about the Nanking Massacre. So he set out to create his own film The Truth about Nanjing (南京の真実, Nanking no shinjitsu) to set straight what he felt were "fabrications" and "false impressions" propagated by the film and a "setup by China to control intelligence". Several leading politicians, including Tokyo's rightwing governor, Shintaro Ishihara, have come out in support of the film which basically denies that a massacre ever happened and honours several post-war criminals as martyrs. Now that the film is out, tensions are running high (watch that fiery debate in the second clip on the right).

People’s Daily reports that Tianjin-based China National Computer Virus Emergency Response Centre warns Chinese Internet users of a Valentine’s ‘virus’ which may spread through emails and on-line chat services (such as QQ and MSN): watch out for "Vbs_Valentin.A" in “attachments disguised with Valentine blessings for February 14.” Now who would like to mislead us naïve lovers on such a day like February 14?

• Japanese investigators have found 'no abnormality' at the dumpling factory in Hebei Province at the centre of a food safety scare in Japan after hundreds of people suffered from pesticide poisoning from eating the dumplings. Traces of pesticide were found on the outside of the dumplings and not in the fillings, leading investigators to point to "deliberate poisoning, rather than accidental contamination". This idea, however, has been rejected by Chinese experts.
• The world's most powerful music labels — Universal Music, Sony BMG (HK) and Warner Music (HK) — have taken Baidu to court in Beijing for not removing links they say infringe on their copyrights. In a related ruling in December, the three firms lost their case against Sohu and Sogou. Meanwhile, Google is preparing to crack China open in the digital music arena. It is in talks with Universal to offer music downloads here. EMI and Sony BMG may join the deal.
• A statement from China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and the Ministry of Information Industry has clarified that the controversial new rules requiring online-video companies to be state-controlled don't apply to already-established Web sites, offering hope to privately-owned video startups such as Youku and Tudou which have raised tens of millions of dollars from venture capitalists.

Reuters: China steeled for worse weather as holidays loom

Take a walk down Panyu (Fanyu) Lu from the Film Art Centre and you will soon pass by the SH508 restaurant. It occupies a slaughtered renovated colonial mansion adorned with a huge neon sign. Unknown to the proprietors, reviewers and most of the customers, this is actually the former family home of British writer J.G. Ballard.

Earlier we had reported that America's favorite pastime might soon be making its Chinese debut and now it's official. The China Series 2008, as its being called, will feature two games between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres on March 15-16. The games will be held at Beijing's Wukesong Baseball Field, which will also be used for the upcoming Olympics. No word yet on when tickets will be available or how much they will be.

Air Asia, Asia's first budget airline, has just announced its latest China destination. From now on, you can fly from Hangzhou (which is just a stone's throw from Shanghai) to Kuala Lumpur at a fraction of the price! We just did a quick check on their system and if you plan ahead of time, you can expect to pay around RMB1,115 (taxes included) for the flight. You can even select your own seats on the website if you pay an additional RMB48! Kuala Lumpur being Air Asia headquarters, you can fly onward to a host of other exciting Southeast Asian destinations for that much-needed break. Other Chinese destinations currently served by Air Asia are Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xiamen and Macau.

Next time, Steve, stay for some Grandma's Mashed Potatoes. Trust us.