Posts Tagged ‘China’

Facism ... and Communism

Excerpts from Obama's inauguration speech:

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.

Most of us should have no problem with this kind expression, but let me remind you that in Asia, there's a hyper-sensitive country with fragile feelings, which its regime still insists that communism is the only way forward

China's state television, CCTV actually broadcasted Obama's inauguration live on its news channel. If my memory serves me right, this is the first time they have done such thing, and I think CCTV should be praised for that.

However, its hyper-sensitivity eventually kicked in. The live pictures were cut moments after Obama mentioned "Communism". The relative paragraph in Obama's speech is also removed in the "full text" of the speech published on most Chinese websites.

Even as a Chinese, I have great difficulty of understanding where this hyper-sensitivity comes from. When he mentions communism, he clearly means Soviet Union. Well, we all know China is more of a capitalist country anyway. If Ministry of Truth has problem on how Obama weights communism and facism as kind of the same thing ... if you can read Chinese,have a look on how Minitrue finds an "appropriate place" for the CCP.

Despite the hyper-sensitivity thing, I think Chinese media generally did well this time. Yes they removed parts from the "full text" of the Obama's speech, but most of them were forced to do so. But look at the brighter side, Obama's remark made to the public airwave tells me that Live pictures on CCTV probably are in fact, live pictures and not delayed - now that's quite rare, especially for political events.

China declares war on "vulgar" websites

For many Chinese websites, 2009 didn't start very well. China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre, a semi-government agency, has published a list of websites which contain "vulgar and unhealthy information" that could be harmful to the country's youth.

The whole list can be found here(in Chinese).

The interesting thing about this list is that it covered majority of the most popular websites in China. Google was ranked number one "vulgar" site, followed by Baidu and Sina. I'm very confident that every Chinese netizen have visited at least one of such vulgar websites, myself included. So after being diagnosed as psychotic under the Chinese guideline because I need to work on my computer for too long,  I'm now also officially a vulgar and unhealthy person because I have visited at least 75% of the websites listed.

Most of the Chinese netizens are very familiar with such Internet Cleansing campaign as it was repeated many times in the past decade. Despite that most of the cleansing was justified under the banner of "please think of the children"(which itself is a logical fallacy) ,it's usually the adult internet users who are most affected.

Have these campaigns worked, anyway? Well, the funny thing is, thanks to the new Xinhua Search engine, an official search engine intended to censor vulgar information,  if you know the right keyword, you can find as many "vulgar" information as you can expect to find in most commercial websites. I can list you an endless list of examples of vulgar information that can be found on Chinese official news websites like the Xinhua Net: this, this, this ,or this, and the list goes on,  and yet they were never criticised by anyone.

It's a common sense that it is impossible to censor out all those "unhealthy" stuffs if somebody really wants to find them, as there is a market for it.

As a regular user of the most vulgar website (Google), I cannot recall not even once that Google returns me "unhealthy" information, unless I deliberately searched for it (I admit it, haha) - not to mention Google has a optional filter that censors images and texts, which is very effective in my opinion. Therefore it is hard for me not jump to the conclusion that the accusation of search engines means that creators of the list, themselves deliberately searched "vulgar" information in order to produce the list.

So now who's unhealthy and vulgar?

In my idea, protect the future generation probably wasn't the original purpose of all those internet cleansing campaigns, and the campaigns themselves, are kind of the ridiculous - find me another country on this planet which labels the absolutely majority of its netizen population as "internet addicted" and "vulgar"?

Most of the Chinese parents, including mine, are not as tech-savvy as their children, some don't even use the internet, TV and newspaper are still their major sources of information, which are still largely controlled by the state. Strangely, they are in fact the targeted audience of such campaign.

So it's not surprising that I have met too many Chinese parents who didn't hesitate to use corporal punishment to their children just because they logged onto the Internet without parents' knowledge, because deeply in their mind, the word "internet" means "evil". Sounds shocking but luckily, as the post 80's generation are gradually becoming parents themselves, use of such corporal punishment are now less common.

However, for the older generation, although their children are now grown up and corporal punishment won't work on them any more, but bear in mind that they are now the most powerful generation in China, in 40-50s(or even older), financially stable; and as they usually have the directorial positions in organisations or their work places, this group is also potentially a powerful political force.

Now the long demonisation of the Internet is starting to make sense to me.

Sanlu tainted milk update

As you may know, top executives of Sanlu are currently before the court,  facing charges which the maximum punishable sentence of death.

The herald has a report on the reaction from Fonterra, New Zealand's biggest company which had 43% share of the Sanlu Company. The prosecutors of this case also disclosed more details on the case, here's my translation of  the summary, and the original is here (in Chinese).

• While sick babies appeared as early as in march last year, Chairwomen of Sanlu only learnt the problem with their product in May, and nobody knew the actual cause (melamine) . Sanlu product was sent away  for inspection on July 24. To keep the issue secret, the inspector was informed by Sanlu that the samples they received are "some raw materials".
• An emergency meeting was held on 1 August, hours after Sanlu received the report back the inspector.  Fonterra claims this is the first time that the issue has come under their attention. News from the Chinese side seems to confirm the claim, however, with one thing missing in the herald report: although Fonterra wanted a product recall, their directors "did not reject" the proposal of not to recall openly but to do it in secret.
• Chairwoman of Sanlu, Tian Wen Hua, made a report to local government a day after the emergency meeting, but had no clear response.
• First Chinese media report on the link between kidney stones and Sanlu products, published on September 9. As Herald reported earlier,   New Zealand Ambassador to China was instructed to act on the issue on September 8.

You know the rest.

I think it's becoming more and more clear that New Zealand government played a big part of making the scandal public, and NZ officials' should be praised for their effort.

However,  there's also more evidence pointing out that there was indeed a cover up at some level, possibly between Sanlu and Hebei Provincial government. And I have to say, if Fonterra really tried hard to make the recall happen as they claimed before,  there's no reason why the total public recall shouldn't happen in Augest. I'm still very suspicious of the Fonterra's involvement in the cover up.

off topic ...

I've been blogging serious topics for too long (especially in my Chinese blog), and the atmosphere is starting to make me choke. Not that bad, but the recent topics really made me want to keep myself away from here for a bit, nobody always "on" forever.

I think its time to go off topic a bit. What I usually do in my Chinese blog is to dig up some video clips from youtube, and introduce them here. I tend to turn my attention to the ads on TV ... for no apparent reasons.

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First one is a promo from National Geographic Channel Australia. If you watch other versions of the channel, the chance is, you have never seen the following clip before as it is for the Australian version only.

This is the most beautiful, in fact, most elegant piece of art I've ever seen on all the television channels you can get in New Zealand. But sadly, as a lot of wonderful things in New Zealand, this promo is also made in Aussie.

Second one is an ad of gorilla drumming and trying to sell you ... Cadbury Chocolate.

I understand this "gorilla campaign" débuted in the United Kingdom some time in 2007, and New Zealanders saw this ad on their tellies a year later. The ad was a huge success in the UK and it was so prominent, there is even a Wikipedia article for it. In New Zealand, the ad helped the song in the ad (Phil Collins, "In the Air Tonight") re-enter the NZ singles chart and briefly reached #1.

However, I am still having difficulty of understanding how this ad is suppose to work. What's the connection between a gorilla drumming and chocolates? This ad appeared on TV many times but I still cannot recall which brand the ad is for before the brand name appears at the end.

Third one is a Kiwi classic - "we don't know how lucky we are". I doubt if there is need for me to introduce this song to New Zealand audiences.

This is a remake version as no original version is available on youtube at the moment. Sadly, again, as a lot of good things in New Zealand, they are either made in Australia, or become Australian later like John Clarke.

The last one is an example of how not to do your TV ads. It's in Chinese so I'll explain it a bit later.

If you were suspecting your computer crashed like how a video tape jams a player, you are far from alone. It's in Chinese, and there are basically three parts:

恒源祥，北京奥运会赞助商，龙龙龙！

Heng Yuan Xiang, sponsor of the Beijing Olympics, dragon dragon dragon !

First part is the brand name, second part is very self explanatory. The phrase has been repeated 12 times in the ad, and only the last part is different in every loop. Like in the example, the ad went on to read every Chinese zodiac animal three times in every 'loop". Hardly innovative, but highly annoying. When this ad first appeared on Chinese TV, most people I know got up from their couch and had a very close inspection of their TV just to make sure it is still working.

There were also people who went further and called their local TV Stations, besought the station to take off the ad. I wasn't in China at the time but I understand for the business, it was a huge campaign and the ad appeared in almost all channels.

Hurt feelings, the real discussion

If you are here looking for an English version of my post, sorry, it won't be here, I generally only talk about NZ related topics here.  The site that directed you here should did a much better job than me so I don't feel the need to translate the original post.

However, I do like to talk about it a bit. My original post was trying to make fun out of  this "hurt feelings" phenomena to make the topic looks less serious -  as I do in pretty much every political issue. I did express a bit of my opinion but it was quite blur and was largely undetected by translators.

By publishing that post, I hoped that  my fellow countrymen can have their own opinion on these four questions:

• Did those countries really hurt their feelings?
• Why more than 1/5 of the world are such "culprits"?
• Is there any country that has genuinely hurt their feelings not on the map?
• Or is there something wrong with that kind of diplomatic expression?

I don't mind how they would be positioned on the political spectrum, as long as they start to think themselves, not to just follow what's being said in People's Daily or Global Times, then I'm happy.

It wasn't just a pointless internet research to kill some time, I got many previously unknown facts to me out of it. The biggest "feeling hurter" of Chinese people's feelings for the last century, which is Russia in my opinion, despite the fact that it has accommodated the Dalai Lama's visits before, was not on the map. The phrase was never used on Russia even in the worst times between the two countries.

Instead, it's the countries like Nauru or St Lucia, which most ordinary Chinese would have great difficulty of finding them on a world map that have hurt the "Chinese people's feelings".

It was also discovered that meet the Dalai Lama does not necessarily "hurt Chinese People's feelings". It is highly circumstantial - Sarkozy suffered a storm of Chinese criticisms for having a conversation with the Dalai Lama; but the Polish president did that too, and hosted the Sarkozy - Dalai Lama meeting on Polish soil, and yet still got away with it.

Compare with that, Iceland and Jordan, hurt Chinese people's feeling by allowing the visit of former vice president of Republic of China Lien Chan in the late 90s. Needless to say, he later turned out to be an "old and great friend" of Hu's.

The reflections of my findings I gathered from China-related blogsphere were surprisingly diverse - as long as my fellow countrymen start to think themselves rather than just follow what's being said in the People's Daily or the Global Times, then I'm happy that my effort is worth something.

Most people seem to agree with me on the fact that the vast majority of the "hurt feelings" incidents happened after 1970s is as the result of China opening up itself to the world  - the famous economic reform（改革开放）started in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping.

However, some attributed that fact to Mao's death in 1976, suggesting that his departure left Chinese people's feelings unprotected and vulnerable to the outside world, and the economic reform has severely undermined the interests of ordinary Chinese people.

Some Chinese netizens were equally surprised as myself to discover that countries like Australia, South Korea or Russia were not the map. Equally, other people were surprised to find countries like Albania ("the only shining beckon of communism in the sea of Soviet revisionism/Capitalist Europe? [I'm not quite sure]") in the list. What do these facts mean is up to their own interpretation.

It also raised discussions about the phrase "hurt Chinese people's feelings" itself. I always regarded it as a very absurd and childish thing to say on the diplomatic stage.  Countries don't hurt each other's feelings - they speak with 'carrot and stick'(at least for now). You don't say somebody hurts your feelings when he attacked you
with a stick, you either fight back (... well, if you are powerful enough) or just get over with it.  Put yourself in a 'weak' position and make yourself sounds like the "justified" side does not do anything good but only fuels unhealthy hate and revenge thoughts among the general public as people discover that crying for "hurt feelings" won't solve anything.

And even worse, repeated use of the phrase diminishes the power of the "real" feelings of the Chinese people. The value of Chinese people's feelings deflates every time the phrase is being used - it looks less important in the foreign eyes as the feelings can be "hurt" repeatedly with no apparent consequences.

There are people who do feel that their feelings have been genuinely hurt by the countries I listed, and made a good use of my map by keeping it for future "revenge".

However, for most of the Chinese who remain apolitical for most of the their life, the expression is just something demonstrating the total
disconnect between the State's affairs and real people's life. What's the point to care who's been hurting me lately? I don't run the country, and I never had a say on anything even regarding of my own feelings.

What do you think? Any different thoughts? I would love to hear it from you.

71st Anniversary of Nanking Massacre

As some said, historical atrocities like the Nanking Massacre are forgiveable, but not forgettable. We remember our tragic past not just because of the hundreds of thousands of innocent lives lost,  we also remember how the such basic humanity was lost in this atrocity. It serves as a constant reminder that such a tragedy should never happen again to any member of the mankind - I also believe that if the outside world really cared of what was happening Nanking, the outcome would be totally different.

But as the author of the book "The rape of Nanking"  Iris Chang notes, she fears that: "this reversion in human social evolution, would be reduced to a footnote of history, treated like a harmless glitch in a computer program that might or might not again cause a problem, unless someone forced the world to remember it." The facts of this massacre are still largely unnoticed in rest of the world.

Remembering a historical atrocity is to remember the full picture of it, not just the hate involved. There were also people who cared, who did something to try to stop the tragedy, and we are forever graceful for them. John Rabe, despite of his Nazi Party member stuatus, saved at least 100,000 Chinese lives in Nanking Safety Zone.  John Magee, an American missionary who risked his life to secretly film the masscre in Nanking,  just wannted the world to know that should do something.

Lest we forget.