Results tagged “military”

If you've been to Beijing, chances are you've been dragged to the Summer Palace at some point during your tourist rounds. Even if you've never been there, chances are you've heard of Empress Dowager Cixi's famous marble boat. If not, the story goes that Cixi embezzled funds meant to build a Navy to protect China from foreign invaders, and built an immobile boat out of marble for the imperial retreat. The Empress made her point, but since then the boat has become a symbol of China's underdeveloped Navy. Which is a reputation that China has been working diligently to reverse. And what better way to symbolize that turnaround, of course, than to build an aircraft carrier out of cement?

For those of you that missed yesterday's big party, here's an awesome 3.5 minute timelapse version by Dan Chung of The Guardian which is just absolutely sublime and splendiferous. Some have said this is the "only version of China's National Day Parade you need to watch". We agree (and take that, CCTV!).

Gosh, we really have missed the antics of Sarah Palin ever since she stepped down from her post as Governor earlier this year. But we're holding out against all odds for a 2012 presidential run: can you imagine all the sound bytes? In any case, Sarah was in Hong Kong yesterday for her first commercial speaking engagement, a keynote address at the CLSA Investors' Forum. And to say the least, it was key-noteworthy.

Since actors pretending to be doctors in Chinese infomercials are no longer legal, we've decided to delight you today with one of these hilarious - and soon to be rare - specimens. Everything you would ever want in a shanzhai pill ad is here: clipped together Hollywood scenes, a laowai "expert"... and John Voight as POTUS.

We're not sure why, but Chinese vessels seem to be on an angry, aggressive streak as of late - surrounding and tangling with United States vessels in international waters for seemingly no good reason. The most recent incident being with the U.S.'s USNS Impeccable.

More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here).

More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here).

China's "blueprint for a worldwide revolution" according to the US Navy in 1964. [h/t to Mutant Palm]

                 

Highly controversial (and tit-tilating) art works from 53 year old Beijing-born painter Hu Ming (呼鸣). Hu's parents were military doctors who had always hoped their daughter would some day become a great surgeon. During her days in high school when the Cultural Revolution was in full swing, Hu's time was all spent either drawing the portrait of Chairman Mao (after her teacher found out she loved painting) or studying the Little Red Book. Finding it all very boring, Hu begged her parents to let her join the army. They relented, and at age 15, Hu joined the People's Liberation Army, where she would serve another 20 years in various roles as a hospital broadcaster/announcer, a librarian, a projectionist, recreational club director, cultural secretary and nurse. [h/t to Wang Ning]

China is the country most feared by Americans as a potential military threat, according to a recent survey by the Financial Times. While China and the United States both appear to at least be interested in engaging each other to secure peace in the Asia-Pacific region, they are also sizing each other up for the possibility of some kind of military confrontation in the future. Shortly after this high level military exchange was conducted in Hawaii, China announced it would suspend all such future exchanges as a way of protesting the supply of military weapons to Taiwan by the U.S.

From Al-Jazeera:

China's staunch support of Sudan's government has led some to question Beijing's involvement in the UN peacekeeping mission to Darfur.

Continue reading "China sends troops to Darfur, Sudan"

What would you do if you paid a shitload of money to study at some college, thinking it would legit and all, only to be told that your diploma would not be recognised after all? We don't know about you, but we would definitely riot. Well, that's what some civilian students at the Hefei PLA Artillery Academy did a few days back. And it turned out to be a very bloody incident. Iron doors were...

Baidu rolled a new feature as of yesterday—a person of the month, which you can see in their logo. They say that they pick the person based on searches done in their engine, so it's a bit like Google Trends meets Time Person of the Year on a monthly basis. This month it's Xu Sanduo (许三多), a character from a popular TV series called Soldier Sortie(士兵突击), which has become one of the more popular shows...

What if Beijing is right? [IHT] What if the doubters have been wrong all along? What if big government and an all-powerful state are good, not bad? What if the business cycle, hitherto thought to be inevitable, if completely unpredictable, could be repealed? These are the questions that Howard French of the IHT asks in his latest Letter from China.China's 1st lunar probe to reach moon orbit Monday morning [Xinhua] China's first lunar probe, Chang'e-1,...

Locals cynically call him "papa," or praise him as their "king." Some expats, meanwhile, call him "big head." Whatever the moniker applied to him these days, Tajik President Imomali Rahmon is showing himself to be a man full of surprises.

More than a dozen prominent Singapore celebrities have come out in support of a new parliamentary petition to repeal Section 377A in the city-state's Penal Code which outlaws “acts of gross indecency” between men by appearing in a Youtube video uploaded recently.

So in the meanwhile, it's become kind of fashionable to blame Beijing for the mess in "Myanmar". Sure, Russia and India have gotten some of the blame for failing to rein in Burma's ruthless junta. ASEAN has also been put to shame for its impotence in handling Burma, and even Singapore's conservative Straits Times (subscription required) has begun to wonder aloud if it's not the right time to suspend Burma's membership in ASEAN, admitting that the "1997 Asean decision to admit Myanmar under the current military leadership without any conditionality was a mistake".

Li Heping, an outspoken Chinese lawyer said Wednesday he was abducted and beaten for hours, and accused of causing unrest by representing clients with complaints of official corruption and police abuse.

Coming up on a year since Berdymukhamedov took power, the Internet is not really any more accessible than it was under Niyazov. There are only a handful of government-run Internet cafes in the capital, Ashgabat, which opened in March.

Burma's military junta has been showing its true colors this week, firing automatic weapons at peaceful demonstrators and raiding monasteries to beat and kill Buddhist monks. But the junta's criminal disdain for human rights has also cast a harsh light on China, the principal commercial partner, strategic ally, and diplomatic protector of the junta.

Cathay Pacific and Air China's parent company abandoned an attempt to block Singapore Airlines from buying a stake in China Eastern, as the battle for the lucrative Chinese market heats up.

Two Italian soldiers kidnapped in Afghanistan were freed on Monday during a raid by NATO-led troops.

Gosh. With the third allegation of hacking by the Chinese military into government computers in Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom surfacing within two weeks, the guys at the Foreign Ministry have been kept busy! Fons Tuinstra points to past cases of bored teenagers who have successfully hacked into other governments and surmised that the German government could not have said that they had an issue with millions of bored Chinese teenagers! Richard Spencer made the erudite argument that if the "US and other western governments are busy infiltrating the computer systems of foreign governments... it is disingenuous to complain too vigorously when those same foreign governments become good at doing it back". Hmm...

As Malaysia celebrates its 50th birthday, the unity of the nation has shown cracks along racial and religious divides. Meanwhile, former premier Mahathir Mohammed is recovering after heart surgery

Photo of Liu Xiang in a Coca Cola ad from spicedfish.

The Indian government on Tuesday invited six aircraft manufacturers including Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. to bid on a contract for 126 combat planes worth up to $10 billion.

The Youtube video shown here produced by Chinese Malaysian student Wee Meng Chee, 24, triggered torrents of invective from Malays, and support from some Chinese in Malaysia.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick on Monday praised Vietnam as a "tremendous success story" in fighting poverty but said institutional reforms were needed as it seeks middle-income country status.

Sri Lanka is fighting against the threatened beheading of a teen maid in Saudi Arabia over the death of an infant. Saving her from beheading has become one of the most urgent issues in a country where nearly everyone has worked abroad or had a relative employed overseas.

An informal survey among Shanghaiist contributors yesterday afternoon found that some can actually now access Flickr (without the use of a Firefox add-on) — and they seem to be concentrated around the same office complex in Jing'an district and pockets of Pudong. The majority of us, though, continue to remain in the dark. There are any number of possibilities to explain for this strange situation: