Results tagged “law”

We've caught ourselves thinking about the difficulties of being disabled in China on many occasions: a significant amount of city spaces and public transport are simply handicapped-unfriendly. Besides the occasional beggar, you rarely see disabled people in public, which is probably thanks to the many social factors constraining handicapped people. But at a very basic level, it's more troubling to think of the difficulties a set of stairs are for someone incapable of using them and the effect it would have on both their ability to travel and their quality of life.

Remember when text messaging wasn't that big of a deal? Way back before touch screens and T9, when your elders had barely gotten used to having a cellular phone on them? Well, the halcyon days of instant communication technology are long gone - if you're one of the "after 90" generation, you've grown up in constant contact with friends, family and the rest of the world.

"Those who drive dare not to drink, those who drink dare not to drive" is a particularly apt and Chinese way to summarize the philosophy behind the recent crackdowns on drunk driving in Shanghai. Sina News recently published a Cops-esque article about dragnets set up at hotels around the city, which captured more than 1200 drunk drivers in just the last ten days. The drama included stakeouts of hotel parking lots, intersection checkpoints, and even searches for "sleeper cars" with drunk drivers trying to "sleep it off". Once caught, techniques of avoiding arrest in Shanghai range from the internationally popular "drink two bottles of mineral water" to the less palatable "wash your mouth out with soap". It seems the Shanghai police are serious about this campaign: they've even forced on-duty policemen to turn off their mobile phones to avoid "preferential treatment" of suspects. Amazing!

Renowned sexologist and sociologist Li Yinhe (李银河) writes in a recent blogpost on China's laws against gay blood donors. A group of lesbians in Beijing are now fighting for the right to donate blood:

• Will this stop the pandamonium? [Daily Mail] "It is a desperate cry - or rather a very loud trumpet - for attention. These elephants were painted black and white to look like the pandas who have stolen all their fans. The elephant is Thailand's national symbol, but the country has gone panda-crazy since the birth of a female panda cub to pandas Lin Hui and Xuang Xuang at Chiang Mai zoo in Bangkok."
• Who’s Who Among China’s Sovereign Wealth Fund Advisers [WSJ] "China Investment Corp., the country’s $200 billion sovereign wealth fund, has finally unveiled its long-planned International Advisory Council, which The Journal wrote about Monday (Call us petty, but we can’t help noting - given that that one of council’s stated missions (In Chinese here) is to advise CIC on “increasing transparency” - that it took four days from the group’s first meeting for CIC to disclose its membership)."
• Work resumes at Shaoguan toy factory [Danwei] "The fight at the Xuri toy factory in Shaoguan, Guangdong Province that has been called one of the causes of the current unrest in Xinjiang made the cover of today's New Express. A major fight broke out at the factory on June 26 between Han and Uighurs workers, leaving two men from Xinjiang dead, but according to today's paper, which features a big cover photo of smiling Uighur women working at the factory, production has resumed."

• What do you notice in this view of Kunming? [James Fallows] "Every roof as far as you can see has solar-thermal panels for hot water heating. More to come shortly on China's general environmental/climate situation, but I think this vista is different from that in many US cities — among other details you might notice, in the prevalence of the panels."
• Smoking kills - but few aware [People's Daily Online] "One-third of doctors in the country do not know smoking causes coronary heart disease, and nearly four in five do not know passive smoking can cause sudden infant death syndrome, a report revealed yesterday. Also, three in five smokers do not know that smoking causes heart disease, and four in five do not know it could lead to a stroke, the national tobacco control office of the Ministry of Health said in the report."
• 'Oldest pottery' found in China [BBC News] "Examples of pottery found in a cave at Yuchanyan in China's Hunan province may be the oldest known to science. By determining the fraction of a type, or isotope, of carbon in bone fragments and charcoal, the specimens were found to be 17,500 to 18,300 years old."

Zhuhai Police sexes up its own image in a snazzy new television commercial designed to attract more recruits. The ad was produced by the propaganda office of the department.

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.

The Shanghai Daily reports that a 40 year old man has been arrested in Nanjing for "forcing dozens of young men" to provide gay sex services, some of whom he also forced to have sexual relations with himself. Citing the Yangtze Evening News, the report said "about 80 percent of [the man's] 'little brothers' were not gay but were forced or fooled into joining the business. The youngest was only 18." The operation supposedly catered to over 100 clients a day including "a professor from a prestigious university in Nanjing... and local government officials" (were they caught, we wonder?) who paid RMB300 for their first visit and RMB200 for repeat visits. The man took a 30% cut from his sex workers and reportedly even charged them RMB10 per condom if they asked for it.

• A 23 year old woman has been charged in Minhang District for attempted extortion for allegedly trying to extort 500,000 yuan from her boss after she saw a love letter on his computer.
• Great news for families of migrant workers here: Children without a Shanghai hukou can now apply to the local education administration to receive education.
• Over 100 fare dodgers on the Shanghai subway were caught and fined the maximum penalty of RMB45 during a four-hour crackdown yesterday. Maybe if the maximum penalty were a little higher, people would think twice next time.

UPDATE 2: Adult entertainment studio Harmony Films wants to offer 'Kappa Girl' a real job

A group of 38 petitioners from Shanghai yesterday made their way to Hong Kong to submit their application forms for the establishment of a "Chinese Petitioners Alliance" to the Hong Kong Police Headquarters. RFA adds that outside the police headquarters, the petitioners unfurled banners protesting forced evictions by the Shanghai government and accusing the PSB in Shanghai and Beijing of lawlessness. Petitioners said that they were doing this because Hong Kong had greater relative freedom than the mainland, greater respect for the rule of law and greater media freedom. Some of them, who shall remain unnamed here, told the media that prior to this trip to Hong Kong, they were repeatedly harrassed by their local police and area councils and warned that they might be detained on their return to Shanghai and sent in for 're-education'. More news and videos available here (in Chinese and behind the GFW) for those of you that are interested.

"Nearly 1,000 workers staged a rare sit-in protest outside a Shanghai factory Tuesday in the latest sign of strain in China's manufacturing industry, which has been hit hard by the economic crisis."

This story caused us to hyperventilate after we realised that it happened right here in what is supposed to be China's most liberal city. Professor Yang Shiqun (杨师群) of Shanghai's East China University of Political Science and Law (which by the way is supposed to be a pretty good uni) was reported by two of his female students to the public security bureau and the municipal education committee for his alleged anti-government and counter-revolutionary ideas. Steve Cotner of The Foreign Expert translates a blogpost written by the professor (which seems to have been removed by Sohu in the meanwhile — read his other less subversive views here) telling his side of the story:

Students Accused Me of Being “Counterrevolutionary”

Continue reading "The Yang Shiqun Case: Political science students report their lecturer to the PSB for 'counter-revolutionary' ideas"

From RFA:

近日有聽眾向本台提供片段，指廣州街邊出現不少不法商人將用過的舊茶葉晒乾，加上香精後，然後加上偽冒的一九五八年普洱包裝，在市場上銷售。由次片段所見，在廣州街邊有人在衛生條件惡劣的露天地方，將晒乾的茶葉包好，然後印上一九五八產普洱字樣出售。工人 在地上包裝和處理茶葉，整個包裝地點都未有任何衛生及消毒設施。

Continue reading "Video: Used tea repackaged and resold in Guangzhou"

'He is a sicko,' B.C. model's boyfriend says about murder suspect [CanWest News Service]

UPDATE: 'Kappa Girl' detained by Shanghai police!

For those of you still wondering if the pre-Olympic easy visa days are going to return or not, here's your answer. They are a thing of the past, so don't look back because they ain't coming back anytime soon. Three months after the Beijing Olympics, the police are still maintaining their vigilance and conducting spot checks by knocking on residential apartments and offices to see if you are really what your visa application says you are. A Filipino maid has just been ordered to leave China for falsifying her documents. In her application for a residence permit in September, she claimed to be a Shanghai branch representative of an international company but was later found by the police to be working as a maid for an executive of a foreign-invested company. [Source]

A friendly reminder from the Shanghai Daily that you would do well to heed:

THE city's exit-entry administration is reminding local foreigners that most will need to renew their residence registration certificates at police stations this month.

Continue reading "Time to update your temporary residence permit"

• Even your eggs aren't safe now, people. After Hong Kong found Select's "extra-large fresh brown eggs" to contain close to twice the legal limit of melamine, Walmart has pulled all eggs from the brand off the shelves of all its China stores. Select (咯咯哒 or "Gegeda" in Chinese) is a big brand and is one of those "China Famous Brands" (中国驰名商标). Refer to the packaging of the affected eggs in the video, and if you have them at home, dump them.
• A 37 year old woman from the Zhejiang province has come to Shanghai to seek medical treatment for her incontrollable shaking after spending RMB100,000 on medical care in Hangzhou, but even the best doctors at Huashan Hospital are baffled by her condition.
• An Anhui man has been sentenced to death for the cruel murder of the ex-husband of his lover. After suffocating his victim with a plastic bag, he dismembered him with a kitchen knife and then boiled and steamed all his body parts before dumping them in a creek in Pudong.

Photo from fateless_gypsy

It's not just the United States that has a gun problem. China too is now fighting a tough battle against illegal guns and explosives. While Chinese citizens are prohibited from owning guns, gunfights and gun murders are increasingly being heard of. Guns are now fashionable in paintings and on television, and legal shooting clubs allow you to fire away at targets for a fee. Recent reports are now suggesting that some of the illegals guns originating from China are now making their way overseas to places like Mexico.

Photo by Jakob Montrasio.

Warning: Video contains some disturbing images.

Some of you will remember him for his messy hair, and others will remember him for his tight ass, but Aric Queen is back, this time with a hairband. The former City Weekend nightlife columnist, one time Shanghaiist contributor and serial podcaster found himself wanted by the police for a series of videos that he had been filing for Current TV under the name Shanghai Diaries (not to be confused with Dan Washburn's 2002 blog of the same name). Aric is going to tell the story of his exile from Shanghai in a new series which we presume is starting pretty soon.

Security cameras at an ATM belonging to the Agricultural Bank of China in Zhengzhou, the Henan provincial capital, have captured a crime in action committed by a (not too intelligent) young man in a suit. Upon withdrawing some cash, the man did not take his money immediately, but instead swapped one of the RMB100 notes with a fake one from his pocket and, if we're understanding this correctly, fed it back into the machine and got a new note in exchange for it! The ATM, like many other ATM's across China could not tell real notes from fake notes. Bank employees, on finding the fake note, immediately made a police report, and the young man was nabbed on his next attempt to trick the ATM. The young man told police that he had heard from his friends that ATM's would take in fake notes and give new ones in return and so proceeded to try his luck. The police spokesperson said this guy was guilty of "severely disrupting the banking and financial system of our nation".

ChinaSmack points us to this shocking and sad story of 11 year old student Zhang Yaoyin in Hunan Province who had her had smashed against the desk by her teacher numerous times, then hit savagely with a metal bar before going thrown out of the window of the fourth storey classroom to her death.

The Shanghai Daily reports that a 20 year old man, apparently dissatisfied with his genital surgery killed a 71 year old doctor by stabbing him with a pair of scissors in Zhejiang. He has since been detained after attacking two others in the rampage. The murder was committed at the Hangzhou Changzheng Medical Outpatient Department.

Photo from Lomogirl.

Valleywag points us to an interesting article in the Financial Times which highlights five markets in which Google plays second fiddle to local rivals — Russia, the Czech Republic, Japan, Korea and, you guessed it, China.