Results tagged “media”

The Press Freedom Index, an annual ranking of countries by Reporters Without Borders about their press freedom records, was published recently. Surprise surprise, China ranks one of the lowest on the list.

Yes, the rest of the article clarifies what they actually meant... but what can we say? We're easily amused by the things we find on China Daily.

• Magazine's business chiefs resign [SCMP] "Top business executives at Caijing magazine, the mainland's most influential business publication, have resigned en masse, heightening speculation its ownership may change hands soon or that its managing editor and founder, Hu Shuli, may leave and start her own publication... Caijing general manager Daphne Wu Chuanhui and eight of her nine business directors have resigned, according to reporters briefed about the resignations."
• Can the Future of Western Newspapers be Saved by China? [Sino Tech Blog] "When looking at the Western and Chinese online newspaper landscape, many obvious differences are evident. There has been much written recently about the demise of the newspapers in the West as their circulation plummets and their online revenue models struggle to counter these losses in revenues. But what about the situation in China? Is the outlook as bleak? Is their similar trends and examples as there are in the US?… This is what I wanted to explore and understand more."
• Upgrade rather than cancellation for CCTV's concert series [Danwei] "The cancellation of CCTV's popular touring concert series, The Same Song (同一首歌), reported by the mainland media late last week and covered in this post, now seems to be little more than a rumor. The Beijing Times spoke to CCTV management and published a brief article on Saturday: 'Rumors have been flying saying that CCTV's flagship program The Same Song would be canceled after the National Day holiday. Yesterday, CCTV arts and entertainment center director Zhang Xiaohai said in an interview that no such cancellation would occur.'"

• Tony Blair: China's New Cultural Revolution [WSJ] "Yesterday, just a week after the 60th anniversary celebrations of the People's Republic, China kicked off its first World Media Summit. It shows how far China has come—and how far it has to go. First, understand the problem. We all know China is a nation of 1.3 billion people, but that is just a statistic. Think of how we regard the United States—how different California is from Ohio, for example. Then quadruple it. Think of trying to meld China's 56 native ethnic groupings into one cohesive state. Think of the disaster, not just to the Chinese, but to ourselves, if it fractured."
• It's China's world. (We just live in it) [Fortune] "You wouldn't think the men who run the oil-rich country of Nigeria would have much spring in their step these days. The nation is plagued by a never-ending guerrilla war, one that has trimmed the country's oil production to two-thirds of its potential capacity. But now Nigeria is in the process of renewing production licenses for some of its most prolific offshore fields, and there's a new player in town making the traditional oil powers from the West (Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, Total) very nervous — and the Nigerian government very happy… CNOOC."
• How To Deal With Corruption In China [Forbes] "It happened to Coca-Cola on Sept. 14, to Rio Tinto a month before. Even the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. has been hit. The Chinese government has now investigated employees at all three of those companies in high-profile corruption cases. At Coke, a bottling plant employee was accused of taking $1.5 million in bribes. When your company is charged with corruption in China, you have to worry about not only bad publicity but also running afoul of America's Foreign Corruption Practices Act and a Chinese government that is increasingly clamping down on the corrupt activities of foreigners."

Wow, what a National Day, right? We here at Shanghaiist were so enthused by the revolutionary vigor it inspired in us that we decided to say "screw it" to Friday and took an impromptu day off. But over the weekend, it seemed like everyone had an opinion on the October 1 festivities... and since we were hanging around mostly Chinese people, the opinions were overwhelmingly positive.

Sometimes we wonder if China Daily isn't trying to take the piss out of us with these kind of stories.

Thought China's international media expansions are over? Think again - it seems that they're at it again. The South China Morning Post reported today that the CCP will be launching an English-language version of its venerable magazine Seeking Truth ("Qiushi", 求是).

And we thought we had trouble determining the hard hitting news of the hour. (Thanks Brad!)

Interested in learning about the man behind one of our favorite websites on China issues, Danwei? The Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club is bringing us the man responsible, Jeremy Goldkorn, to give a talk tomorrow on the internet in China. He will discuss his own experiences in the blogosphere, as well as topics ranging from the media industry and regulation and the impact of the net on China's society and people.

Shanghaiist reader Oliver Denton has been fact-checking the BBC over its recent story about Oasis canceling the China leg of their tour, which presumably happened because Noel Gallagher appeared at a Free Tibet Benefit Concert over a decade ago (as linked to in a previous post, the promoter insists it was for economic reasons).

Even as the dust settles over last week's Academy Awards, anti-censorship advocates and gay activists across Asia continue to lambast their local television stations for the censorship of two 'Milk' acceptance speeches — one made by Sean Penn, winner of the Best Actor award, and the other by Dustin Lance Black, who picked up the award for Best Original Screenplay. Both speeches were heavily censored in 53 countries all over Asia from India to Singapore and Hong Kong.

Remember the government's proposed 45 billion yuan effort to ensure that the rest of the world sees a media more aligned with what the central politico wants it to see? It's started!

Harper's Magazine recently announced via Twitter that all 25 years of its awesome stats section, Harper's Index, was now available and searchable online here. We searched "shanghai" and got two results. One was about Chairman Mao jackets at Shanghai Tang, and the other was actually related to the city. Here it is, from June 2005: "Percentage change since 1994 in treatment for male infertility and erectile dysfunction in Shanghai: +100." There are considerably more results for "china."

If you were jam packed into Glamour Bar with 600 other people earlier this morning, watching President Barack Obama being sworn in, you might have been a little too dizzy with euphoria (and possibly heatstroke) to notice particular segments of his 18-minute inauguration address -- specifically, ones that likely caused the head honchos in Beijing to collectively cringe.

Beginning Jan 1, Mengniu, one of China's leading dairy firms, has launched a new advertising campaign entitled "Happy Niu Year" which is scheduled to run on television, in print and online, all the way through to Feb 9. The word "Niu" is a play on the Chinese word "牛" which means cow (as well as ox and bull) and this year happens to be the Year of the Bull. This is the first major ad campaign by a Chinese dairy company since the melamine scandal struck late last year. The television commercial for this campaign follows after the jump

So apparently the controversies in international media this summer over China and the Olympics came as a bit of a shock to the Chinese people. While the government's retained tight control over its own media, it's been less able to harmonize those pesky news outlets abroad. Not one to take perceived insults to its national image lying down, Beijing is now throwing RMB 45 billion into targeting global audiences.

• Black and White Cat translates a collection of headlines from the earliest editions of Xinhua Daily, Jiangsu Province's oldest party newspaper. In its bid to oust the Kuomintang, the CCP positioned itself as a champion of democracy and demanded for change, human rights and general elections.
• Tao Wang of UBS explains to Thomas Crampton why he thinks the new wave of unemployment is unlikely to cause unrest in China.
• EastSouthWestNorth has a set of pictures of what is supposed to be Guangdong's most run-down school.

Danwei directed us to the embedded six-month old video of a short local NBC News piece on a Chinese-made three-wheel "car" available from a dealer in Webster, New York (it's actually available in several places in the U.S., like Michigan). The Webster dealer (we think this is his MySpace page ... yes, MySpace) claims women love the Wildfire WF650-C. The jury is still out on that one.

Late last year we documented SH magazine's trials and tribulations. The English-language weekly stopped publishing in December, but it continues to be a source of drama in 2009. A final "funeral issue" — death themed from front to back — was finished and set for publication on December 19. But the swan song never saw the light of day. Until now. The issue in its entirety can be found after the jump on this post. Here's some back story from someone familiar with the situation:

CCTV's new year gala this year was presented in French, Spanish, English and Chinese. Top temples around China, including Fuzhou's Gu Shan Yong Quan Si, Mount Emei's Baoguo Si, Sanya's Nanshan Si, Suzhou's Hanshan Si, and Luoyang's Baima Si, rang in the new year by chiming their bells simultaneously.

The Chinese media is rife with reports of a 25 year old Shanghai woman, Chan Juan (pseudonym), who supposedly gave up her RMB10,000 job, spent RMB100,000 in search of the ideal husband and cycled over 2,000 kilometres from Guangzhou to Shanghai to attend a matchmaking party that was organised just for her. She was promised by the organiser that 1,000 young men would be waiting for her but eventually only two men showed up, one from Shandong and the other from Zhejiang. More than 30 candidates from Shanghai were said to have indicated interest but all chickened out at the last minute.

Aric Queen, former executive producer of ChinesePod, writing from exile, appears to think so. Once upon a time, his friend Frank Fradella flew to Shanghai and approached ChinesePod with a pitch for a new show designed to teach foreigners how to recognise radicals [see video below]. He was told by the Shanghai startup that they didn't have the budget for the show and Fradella flew home a little dejected, but that was that.

Scene at yesterday's press conference at the Foreign Ministry according to Reuters [h/t to Imagethief]:

[Foreign Ministry spokesman] Liu Jianchao was asked what he thought of Sunday's incident, when the television journalist also called the American leader a "dog," and replied all leaders deserved respect.

Continue reading "Newsflash: Foreign affairs spokesman Liu Jianchao has a sense of humour"

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.”

• Why Is Prof. Yang Shiqun Being Investigated? Read His Class Syllabus [China Digital Times]
• Reclaiming Old Shanghai? [The China Beat]
• China: 08 Charter, signers arrested and questioned by police [Global Voices Online]

... and before you start scoffing, it's all from a very reliable and authoritative source of course — no, it's not AC Nielsen and neither is it Taylor Nelson Sofres — it's a doctoral student from Shanghai University by the name of Ni Lin. Never heard of her? Well neither have we, but if the Shanghai Daily starts quoting her as proof of its popularity among expats in this town, then she must be something right?

From Inaction Hero: "China's 'S&M' Enterprises Seek Innovation"

"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."

Hung Huang, the "Oprah of China" (looks like quite a few women share that title with her), will be coming to town this week to speak about NGOs and non-profit organizations within the country. Hung is one of China's most influential media moguls; she's currently the CEO of China Interactive Media (publishers of TimeOut magazine), a writer for the NY Times and a prominent Sina.com blogger, having already conquered different roles within the film and fashion industry. The daughter of a former Chinese Foreign Minister and Mao's personal translator, Hung's Chinese upbringing and North American education have made her a key cross-cultural figure.

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"