Results tagged “security”

• Oooh, according to this photo, the Bund face-lift is finally nearing completion. Thank goodness - we're sick of all the construction dust around what once was the prettiest riverside scenic spot ever. [Shanghai Daily]
• Six months after the previous fashion week, Shanghai's now hosting another for Spring and Summer collections. It'll go on from October 29th to November 7th October 21st to October 27th. [SIFC]
• Shanghai Media Group, the conglomerate responsible for all those taxi and subway television ads, will be split into two parts - Shanghai Radio & TV (news, tech, public broadcast) and Shanghai Oriental Media Group (ads, production, distribution and market investment). You know, for all of you who care about this kind of stuff. [China Knowledge]

If you've never seen Far West China, it's a pretty fantastic blog written by an American expat living in Xinjiang. Since the unrest in Xinjiang this summer, the blog has become a platform for airing the Kafkaesque circumstances that have been imposed on the region. From posts on the psychological effects of the complete internet blackout to the numerous new security checks at mosques and on buses, as well as the increases in tourism to Dunhuang for web access, the blog chronicles the very human issues involved. Personally, we can't even imagine what months without internet would be like, and we're sure that's the least of their concerns. Photo byRemko Tanis @ flickr

With only a week and a half left before the 60th anniversary of the PRC, it seems the whole country has caught National Day fever. Capturing the excitement, Boston.com has a wonderful collection of photos from various sources depicting many different preparations around China. We particularly like the fashion military parade pictures: those outfits are fabulous! But amidst all the hoopla, it's a difficult time to be in Beijing.

In one of the more bizarre incidents to come out of Beijing lately, especially with security gearing up for the National Day celebrations, a man armed with a knife went on a stabbing spree in the major commercial center of Dashilan. He killed two people and injured about a dozen more before being captured by police on patrol. The 46-year-old from Jilin allegedly came out of nowhere. Police said they would strengthen security management in key areas to ensure the safety of local residents and tourists - but considering that safety measures already include items like "tell people not to leave their houses unless absolutely necessary," how much safer can you get without, we dunno, emptying the whole of Beijing?

Most of the time when you read stories about the much reviled Chinese hacker it's in the context of some cyberattack perpetrated on some website that has stupidly dared to hurt the feelings of the Chinese people. But really, what are Chinese hackers doing most of the time: well, duh, same thing everybody else is: trying to make some moolah.

The poor Shanghai nightlife institution has been hit by hackers! Specifically, Muslim Turkish hackers who would really love it if you stopped Israel from being involved in wars. What do the two have to do to with each other? Probably absolutely nothing (we've heard most hackers just troll the internet looking for unsecured sites), but wouldn't it be aMuseing if there was an actual connection there?

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Adam Minter has the answer:

This time security guards were stabbed to death outside of Kashgar in Xinjiang. [Source]

The latest from ESPN.com here and here. And the latest from Google News.

Our favourite club The Shelter has been told to close its doors until September 6, apparently in a bid to improve security for the Olympics (660 miles away).

Lately, the Olympics has started to remind us of the kind of conversation wherein someone is prepared to reveal a secret, but the key details are not forthcoming. Rather, the speaker dances around the facts, dropping a hint here and there at a carefully measured pace, meanwhile we sit silently, captivated and spellbound awaiting the payoff when the whole truth is finally revealed to us. So we will wait another 14 days for the start of Games of the XXIX Olympiad.

    

In an article about official Olympic protest areas, the Wall Street Journal linked to some scanned pages from Olympic Security English, a training manual for Olympic police. We have reproduced those pages for your enjoyment.

Important elements for any anti-terrorism drill — great staging, great scenery and a great location where lots of people can see you. Yesterday's "terrorist" act was effectively countered by the highly efficient security forces in under an hour.

With the recent bus blasts in Kunming which claimed three lives and suspicious SMS messages to warn some residents from taking buses on the day of the explosion, the Shanghai government is taking no changes with the Olympic soccer matches being held in Shanghai Stadium. 1600 cameras will be installed into buses on 68 routes passing the stadium as well as an array of other fire extinguishing and safety devices. Click here for original Chinese article

With the help of U.S. defense contractors, an estimated 2 million closed circuit tv-cameras or CCTVs for short (oh the irony) will be installed over the next three years in Shenzhen. The surveillance experiment is part of the heroically named Golden Shield Project (Patriot Act, anyone?) which also gave birth to another of our favorite censorship models the Great Firewall.

This just in from a reader tip. Via the easternmiles.com newsletter:

China has been pulling out all the stops to make next month's Olympics in Beijing – and several other cities – go according to script. Aside from the usual massive building projects associated with the Games, China has also seriously tightened its visa policy, saturated its citizenry with Olympic propaganda and denied foreign media direct access to most Chinese athletes.

With less than six weeks before the Games, the Chinese visa situation Shanghaiist reported on earlier this month is not getting any better. Many foreign residents living here for years are now being forced to leave China, and some of them are reconsidering "how much of their operations they keep in China," Andrew Work, executive director of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, said. The Wall Street Journal follows a story similar to that of Canadian Daniel Yeung in the Globe and Mail. John T. McAlister, the American co-founder of a scientific-research company, leaves China today after making it his home for the past eight years. Through a series of complications, McAlister had been forced to live on a renewed F (temporary business) visa for the past six months. When it was time to switch to a Z visa, many of the registered companies he appealed to to sponsor him had trouble providing him with working papers. McAlister was told he was too old to qualify for proper work permits (he is 71), but wasn’t told what the official cutoff age was. "The problem about all of this is the suddenness and enforcement of rules that may have existed always but are hard to accommodate in a short period of time," McAllister told WSJ.

Swimming just got a whole lot safer. State media reported on Friday that all Shanghai public swimming pools will now have "specially trained staff" smelling the shampoo and body wash of all swimmers before entry is allowed in an effort "guard against explosions or other "terrorist attacks". Recently "some 400 of the city's more than 450 pools had passed safety examinations", but what of the remaining 50 pools? Well they may be "oblivious of the new rule". Bomb sniffing dogs in the airport, security checks in the metro stations, people smelling your shampoo. We feel so much safer already. See the full Reuters story

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A weekend trip had us stopping off at the Lama Temple, the center of Gelug Buddhism (the particular branch of Buddhism practiced by the Dalai Lama) in Beijing. In light of the recent developments, it probably shouldn't have come as a surprise that they would step up their security but there wasn't any real change that could be detected on the surface. But then we took a closer look. Scattered throughout the temple complex were a number of plainclothes security personnel sporting jackets and earpieces. As far as we could tell, they were just scanning the crowd for rabble-rousers while attempting to blend in. Nervous much? Although in all fairness it should be mentioned that this was one day before the Olympic torch hit Tiananmen.