Results tagged “shenzhen”

Apple has confirmed the unfortunate suicide of the 25-year-old Foxconn employee we reported on yesterday. Sun Dayong, the deceased, was suspected to have been subjected to "unbearable interrogation techniques" after an iPhone prototype under his care went missing. This is believed to have led him to commit suicide. Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet told CNET that Apple was "saddened by the tragic loss of this young employee and we are awaiting results of the investigations into his death... We require our suppliers to treat all workers with dignity and respect." Source: Gizmodo

Rumors are swelling that some parties may have taken Apple's secrecy policy to the extreme, causing one 25-year-old employee at Foxconn, the manufacturing company for the iPhone, to commit suicide.

• Why China might turn on North Korea [CSMonitor] "China has long seen its national interests served by the status quo on the Korean Peninsula. According to a cold-war perspective about strategic balance and a post-cold-war emphasis on internal development, Beijing prioritized maintaining a buffer state and preventing North Korea's problems from spilling over China's border. While Beijing retains these priorities, the chances of it getting tough with Pyongyang are low. However, the China of today is not the China that came to Pyongyang's aid during the Korean War - its national identity has evolved over decades of rapid development and international integration. The ideas of communist solidarity and laying low to focus on modernization are becoming obsolete."
• Beijing Always Wins [NYTimes] "THE riots in the Xinjiang region, the home of China’s Muslim Uighur minority, will affirm to many analysts outside the country that social unrest is a direct threat to the continued rule of the Communist Party. If officials don’t take a long, hard look at how to avoid such uprisings, this argument will run, the government could eventually fall. If only Chinese officials saw things that way."
• Shenzhen Mayor Under Investigation [eChinacities] "Xu Zongheng(许宗衡), 54, was removed from his post as mayor of Shenzhen and is under investigation into allegations of corruption and graft that have stretched to include a former Olympic gymnast and several actresses. Xu became mayor of Shenzhen in 2005, advocating changes in the city’s bureaucracy. Many view Xu as partially responsible for the subsequent collapse of Shenzhen’s real estate market. The allegations revolve around bribes received for awarding government posts and bids."

What's going on with China and its exploding buses? Just days after that bus fire in Chengdu killed 24 people, one in Shenzhen burst into flames as well. On the morning of June 13, a public bus on the 320 route began emitting smoke at a traffic light intersection.

This is an advertisement. From July 6 to 19 Shenzhen High School, south China's best public school, will organize an American culture summer camp for gifted sixth-graders. We are looking to hire 10 bright and motivated Americans to teach four hours a day for 12 days. Our compensation is 8,000 yuan, free food and hotel room, and 1,000 yuan travel allowance. Go to specialcurriculum.com for more info. Interested applicants should e-mail a cover letter and resume to shenzhongabroad@gmail.com. More job ads. Place a job ad.

Thomas Crampton points us to a special fundraiser held Friday night in Shenzhen by the American Chamber of Commerce in South China to benefit orphans. Star of the evening was none other than Presidential-elect Barack Obama's half-brother Mark Ndesandjo. The media spotlight was firmly on him as reporters turned up in full force to get close to Ndesandjo.

President-elect Barack Obama has a half-brother by the name of Mark Ndesandjo who's been in Shenzhen for a few years now. According to this video report by a Shenzhen TV station (we think), on the day of Obama's victory, Mark Ndesandjo sent a text message to all his friends announcing "新美国来了！” ("The new America has come!"). The video also shows Ndesandjo teaching kids piano at an orphanage and practising calligraphy in his free time when he's not running his Internet company World Nexus. And, oh, he seems to speak very fluent Mandarin too.

A pair of female Siamese twins joined at the belly have been successfully separated by doctors in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. The girls are understood to be in critical condition and even their parents have not been allowed to spend time with them. The parents of the twins say that doctors had only told them during their three ultrasound checks that they would have twins but it was not until the day of the caesarian operation did they realise that the girls were conjoined. Four days after birth, the girls were admitted to the Shenzhen Children's Hospital. At that time, they weighed only 4.2kg in total, but grew to 9.6kg before doctors decided to go ahead with the operation. This is only the second case of conjoined twins to be handled by Shenzhen doctors.

This CCTV recording from a Shenzhen restaurant on Oct 29, carefully captioned by the wonderful guys from ChinaSmack, shows an 11 year old girl guiding a man to the restroom, and running away back into the restaurant soon after. She returns with her parents and brother to confront the man with the help of the restaurant, and a huge argument soon ensued. According to the girl, the man had grabbed her neck and tried to force her into the bathroom with him.

Hot on the heels of the widely-discussed closure of the Hong Kong-listed Dongguan-based toy manufacturer Smart Union comes the news that yet another toy factory — this time a much smaller one — has gone bankrupt. Once again, the local government has come to the rescue, picking up the tab for lost wages that the now jobless employees are demanding to prevent their anger from boiling over. Do we see a pattern for the future?

We know — the on-again-off-again Disney Shanghai deal is getting kinda bawwwrrrriiiing — but latest news has it that the deal could include a major media component that would leave other media companies salivating and give Disney unrivalled access to the highly sought-after Chinese market:

The joint venture agreement would give Disney a huge advantage over U.S. media rivals by allowing it to bypass foreign film import quotas and summer and holiday blackout periods, as well as television censorship, both imposed by the central government.

Continue reading "Disney Shanghai to include media deal?"

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.

                        

We're somewhat late bringing this to you, but yes, over the weekend, anti-French protests took place over the weekend all over China outside Carrefour stores in Hefei, Qingdao, Wuhan, Shenzhen, Xuzhou, Zhengzhou, Luoyang, Jinan and Kunming. Although these were mainly anti-French anti-Carrefour protests, they were described by People's Daily as "protests against Tibetan independence".

Huang Qingnan (黃慶南), the activist from the Shenzhen Dagongzhe Migrant Worker Centre who was brutally hacked on his back, waist and leg is finally well enough to give an interview. Erm, well, not really. From this video, it appears he was splashed with acid too? We can't quite tell. Urgh. Anyhow, the muscles on his left calf have all been destroyed, which means he will have to learn how to keep his balance with his remaining muscles. The Dagongzhe centre was forced to close for a while after the attack, but now they've sprung back into action with fund-raising activities which you will see in the second half of the clip. Let's see how the mafia react to that.