….In contrast, he argues, Chinese teenagers are never allowed to take risks, which blocks self-understanding and self-reflection. Because Chinese students never confront typical teenage tribulations, they are doomed to live out their teenage years forever.
I am a product of one of these Chinese boarding schools, and a participant in many small acts of teenage rebellion. Yes, we were required to wear uniforms and were not allowed to wear jewelry. But my desk-mate and I had fun sneaking ear studs behind our hair, an act we perceived as extremely defiant. We were not allowed to leave school on weekdays, so we pretended to be sick and obtained special permission from school nurses to leave school for two hours. Then we devoured hamburgers and fries at McDonald’s and came back in time for afternoon classes.
minipost-“Sticking it to the man” – education in China
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It is hard at this point to be sure of who will benefit the most from it economically. There are concerns in Taiwan that there will be a net loss of jobs as a result of the agreement. Whilst Taiwan will be able to ship goods to China with fewer trade barriers, this does not mean that increased trade will employ more Taiwanese than lose their jobs due to an increase in Chinese imports. After all, some Taiwanese bosses may just pocket increased profit, though others will see increased demand and need to employ more workers. It will be easier to consider the impact of the agreement after it has been in place for a year or two.
But now that the ECFA has been agreed upon, where do Sino-Taiwanese relations go from here? The Wall Street Journal has a suggestion.
“I am a moderate adviser” – Zhang Hong and the Hukou
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“China has suffered from the hukou system for so long. We believe people are born free and should have the right to migrate freely, but citizens are still troubled by bad policies born in the era of the planned economy and [now] unsuitable.”
However, after the editorial spread beyond its origins with those newspapers, Chinese censors apparently leapt into action (or were instructed to do so), and it was promptly removed from many websites. A special website set up by the Economic Observer to discuss hukou reform also disappeared. Furthermore, one of the co-writers of the editorial, Zhang Hong, was ousted from his position as deputy editor-in-chief from the Economic Observer’s website. It was also claimed that the Economic Observer received a warning from the CCP’s propaganda department. Continue reading »
minipost-Uln on Google.cn – “Why it’s Good that Google.cn Leaves”
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“Alleyway in Hell” – a report on China’s black jails
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Introduction
The majority of black jail detainees are petitioners-citizens from rural areas who come to Beijing and provincial capitals seeking redress for abuses ranging from illegal land grabs and corruption to police torture. Petitioners, as citizens who have done nothing wrong-in fact, who are exercising their legal right to complain of being wronged themselves-are often persecuted by government officials, who employ security forces and plainclothes thugs known as retrievers or jiefang renyuan, to abduct them, often violently, and then detain them in black jails. Plainclothes thugs often actively assist black jail operators and numerous analysts believe that they do so at the behest of, or at least with the blessing of, municipal police. Continue reading »
minipost-Intellectual Property Rights in China – business leads the way
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In mid-September the China Internet Video Anti-Piracy Alliance, a group comprising both big Chinese internet portals and foreign rights-owners, including the Motion Picture Association of America, announced a broad legal attack. It said that it had begun collecting evidence against more than 1,000 suspected violators of intellectual property and would start filing lawsuits, with the first target being 503 videos found on Youku, an increasingly popular website, that the alliance claims are pirated. Youku has counter-sued for defamation. Continue reading »
However, Zhang’s conclusions and the method he used to reach them are fundamentally flawed. It starts with a serious lack of understanding of what democracy means these days. As I discussed in a previous post, democracy is not just having elections. It is about an entire system that crosses the country, in regards to not just elections but also the media, judiciary, rule of law and civil rights. If one does not recognise how they are all linked and that if any particular aspect is attacked the rest can be equally compromised, the entire discussion becomes pointless. It also doesn’t help that he gives no definition of “modernization”. Continue reading »
Ma’s ECFA – a win-win policy or selling out local business?
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A question I’ve increasingly asked myself is whether this is a win-win agreement for Taiwan as the KMT and other Pan-Blues would have it, or actually win-win for a handful of big companies and lose-lose for smaller, local businesses. AFP have an article on the ECFA and its potential impact on this part of Taiwanese industry. Continue reading »
Xinjiang officials fired following further unrest – is it enough?
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Where in China is Xu Zhiyong?
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According to reports last week, the legal school and legislator Xu Zhiyong was led away by Police sometime on the morning of Wednesday 28th August. His whereabouts still seem to be unknown – his brother said that he had been charged with tax evasion.
It is hard to see how this isn’t linked to Xu’s work in helping people the State would prefer carried on with their lives like good little citizens, rather than pursue legal recourse against some sort of injustice/embarrassing matter that officials or local/central government would prefer to see the back of. But whatever the reason, this is not good for China’s future. Continue reading »
Elections are the most common aspect of democracy that people will point to, but clearly having elections alone are not reflective of democracy. Saddam Hussein allowed elections. It was just that he was the only candidate and the results were fixed (winning 100% of the vote with 100% turnout in 2002). Clearly, then, the elections must be free and fair, as well as open to a wide range of parties and candidates. But how can an election be free and fair if all the media attention, often because it is State-controlled, goes on one candidate? Or some candidates are harassed and/or subject to legal action simply to get them disbarred from running, as has happened in Singapore? Clearly the overall system must allow free and fair elections to happen.
Continue reading »
The Chinese government still attempts to restrict public discussion in China about the events surrounding the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Its real reasons for doing so can only be guessed at – its official stance on the matter is vague and unsubstantiated. However, the fact that it does at all is highly important.
The “Tiananmen Mothers”, a brave group of campaigners, have long called for an open discussion of and investigation into the circumstances concerning the death of those who were killed 20 years ago. They have done this despite the harrassment many of their members have received from the Chinese authorities. Last week they issued a fresh public statement, calling for an investigation. Continue reading »
minipost-A journalist’s view of the suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen protests
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Continue reading »
Zhao Ziyang’s memoirs – time to update Chinese history?
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When Zhao Ziyang died on 17th January 2005, the Chinese authorities’ official response was muted, with a distinctly vague and brief obituary produced. Yet the fact this was all Chinese newspapers were allowed to publish, bar those in Hong Kong, and that online tributes were immediately deleted showed that the government knew Zhao’s importance was much greater than a handful of words.
Continue reading »
minipost-The Baidu leak – reflections on freedom of speech and information in China
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Baidu’s Internal Monitoring and Censorship Document Leaked
The latest hot item circulating in the Chinese blogosphere is a compressed folder leaked from a Baidu employee. It contains a set of working documents from Baidu’s internal monitoring and censorship department, with details including staff names, their performance records, company contact lists, censorship guidelines, operating instructions, and specific lists of topics and words to be censored and blocked, guidelines of how to search information which needs to be banned, the backend URL, and other internal company information from November 2008 through March 2009.
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When you really love your job
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Personally I think this is someone who enjoys his job, or otherwise woke up with a spring in his step that day.
I certainly love my job. People often see work differently, and that will be even more so whilst the global recession lasts where there’s less choice over where you can work and what you can do. But I would feel sad if I didn’t feel that I liked what I did every day.
What about you? Does work make you feel happy, or is it a means to an end? What about the other people in the country you live in?
“Chinese need to be controlled”
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Action star Jackie Chan said Saturday he’s not sure if a free society is a good thing for China and that he’s starting to think “we Chinese need to be controlled.”
Chan’s comments drew applause from a predominantly Chinese audience of business leaders in China’s southern island province of Hainan.
I have often thought that actors should stay out of politics, though as everyone is entitled to their view this was a useful way of addressing something I’ve noticed in the past. It seems to me that rich Chinese can be quick to assert similar sentiments. Certainly the article mentioned that the business leaders applauded him on that point.
If all Chinese were incapable of making decisions no Chinese person could be a politician and China would be run by foreigners, so he must think some Chinese can be in control. Thus I suspect what people like Chan actually mean when they say these things, but could never say because they would be ripped to shreds, is “people with lots of money like me can act sensibly but the majority of Chinese are too dumb to make the right decisions”.
Chan added: “I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we’re not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want.”
So Chan thinks that currently Chinese are not doing what they want to do? Is their sense of freedom really just an illusion? This seems like a highly controversial statement to me.
What are your thoughts on these comments and more widely how poor, middle class and wealthy Chinese see this subject?
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