Posts Tagged ‘China’

Dates not allowed on Google (.cn)'s Calendar

As you may know, Google's Chinese localised version is heavily censored.  When the search results contain pages you are not allowed to see, Google.cn usually returns a notice on the result page : "据当地法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示" (Some results are omitted as restrited by local laws and policies).

One curious Chinese bloger wondered, how many days in a year are outlawed by "local laws"? He worte a script and found out that, out of 366 days, 11 of them will result the censorship notice on the search result page, these are:

* 13 January
* 31 May
* 4 June
* 13 June
* 20 June
* 25 June
* 30 June
* 5 July
* 19 September
* 13 Octorber
* 18 December

The rationale behind some of these censored dates are quite obvious, like 4 June is the date symbolises Tiananmen Square Massacre and the recent riots in China's Uyghur dominated Xinjiang Region started on 5 July.

However, even as a politically minded Chinese, I don't quite get why the rest of dates are considered "sensitive". I checked Wikipedia, there are some past events related to China, however, most of them are quite normal and can be hardly considered as sensitive events.

Human Rights Record of United States in 2008

In response to U.S. department of State's annual report, China's Information office of the State Council also publishes a similar report to call U.S. to "reflect and take care of its own businesses".

But that's only half of the sentence, what Chinese government really meant is "so stop accusing us". I'm not judging which side has the moral high ground, but I want to point it out that, as that famous "hurt our feelings" remark, I suspect this Chinese version of human rights report is also intended for domestic consumption, rather than a serious attempt to "help" U.S. on human rights record. If that is true, then I have serious doubts on the intelligence of whoever is behind this - making the accuser look bad doesn't mean the accusations made are invalid and the  accused can walk free.

The Chinese report is quite fun to read, and the best thing is, there's an english version, unlike those lazy bums in the States who didn't bother to translate their report.   Highly recommended if you got an hour to kill.

Ministry of Truth on Fire!

My deepest condolences to the family of the firefighter who died on his duty, but it's also extremely fortunate that Mandarin Oriental Hotel (owned by cctv) is not completed yet so it's likely that nobody was actually inside the building.

But no sympathy for CCTV though, it deserves this, and with little bit of guilt, I was kind of hoping that  the main building also catches the fire.

And I was amazed on how fast the social network like Twitter responded to this news. Pictures of the building on fire were already widely circulated less than half an hour after the fire, and official media were busy reporting another fire in Australia ... another prove to show that even the State thinks foreign lives are more valuable than Chinese.

Fonterra knew the milk was contaminated

I am actually very surprised to find out that today's the first time many in New Zealand  know this fact. The current evidence shows that Fonterra learnt the whole issues sometimes in Augest last year,  a month ealier before the whole thing made public.

As the Herald reported today, Fonterra confirms that it has sent Sanlu an European Union "provisional statement" on health effects of melamine, the file states a safe level of concentration below 20mg/kg . I blogged this  in my Chinese blog month ago, but forgot to mention it here:)

This changes the whole situation a bit though, what I knew was an "EU standards", not "provisional statement". One of the reasons why Sanlu kept selling tainted milk powders even after contaminants were discovered, is because that its boss, Tian Wenhua was confident that the "standard"  provided by Fonterra shows there's a safe level, so Sanlu mixed good powders with bad ones to keep the concentration of melamine in individual packaging below that level. To this date the evidence shows that they really did well to control the concentration of melamine below 10mg/kg for products after August.

As reported by Chinese media, Fonterra directors did not "reject" the whole idea of the controlling measures - this tells me Fonterra not just knew the contamination, but also did not try to stop production of melamine contaminated milk.

Now this directly contradicts to what Fonterra said today:

" ... However, he (Andrew Ferrier) said Fonterra was "vividly clear" to Sanlu that the only acceptable level of melamine was zero"

Really? So what happened between August and September? They dodgy Chinese did all without Fonterra's knowledge? Well, we are talking about common sense here, if you got a 43% stake in  a large company, and you know it is in trouble, will you keep your eyes shut on your investment?

I still maintain my position, although none of Fonterra directors faced court in China, they should at least face investigations here at home.

Best new year wishes to everyone

Tomorrow marks the start of another new year in Chinese lunar calendar, most people translate it as "the year of ox", but I prefer to say "the year of bull" for obvious reasons:)

There aren't many of celebrations happen in New Zealand and the weather isn't spring-like at all, but luckily, this year's new year's day coincides with Auckland anniversary, which means that I can spent the new year's day to do what ever people are suppose to do in new year ... I don't know really, my family tend to keep it very simple by just gather family friends and dine together on New Year's day.

What you do isn't that important anyway, the important thing is to maintain that cultural tie with your root.

I understand for many, last year was "a year of chaos", financial crisis, earthquake in China ... I think the best thing to have in new year is not necessarily a bank account with a substantial total, but a healthy body and peace for every family members and friends.  The earthquake in My home province, Sichuan taught me that I should cherish whatever I got at the moment and every moment I have with my family - you just don't know how lucky you really are.

My heart is with all the people who lost their loved ones in the earthquake, as I understand, most of them will spend this new year in temporary housing, with worries that aftershock that may strike anytime.

Let the words of the Big Brother spread

Chinese Media yesterday reported that China is planning to invest 45 billion yuan to raise it's "International images" through foreign broadcasting, possibly to open a "CNN" style news channel.

I always believe that to domestic market, CC's CCTV (lots of CCs, if you can guess what the first two Cs stand for:)) strongly  reassembles a lot of characteristics of the telescreen. Xinwen Lianbo would be an obvious example, every night at 7, if you want to watch TV, that's pretty much the only thing available as it is simulcasted in every major Chinese TV channel.

So will this new channel become an International Edition of the telescreen? I don't know, aren't we already got CCTV 9?

I tried to watch CCTV 9 a while but it's just got too boring eventually, BBC WORLD offers a much wider perspective, more up to date news. What CCTV 9 really amused me is that, no matter what kind of news programme you are watching (like "Asia Today", "World Wide Watch", or "BizChina"); no matter what happened to the World,  the headline almost always stay the same, usually involving a high ranking government official or communist party boss meet foreign visitors, or their words on various issues.

Clearly, to be a respected and trusted world new channel, you must got both global perspective and an editorial independence. Global perspective ... can be possible but I don't expect it from CCTV, but editorial independence? I guess we got another hundred year to wait.