China Digital Times

SECTION: Hong Kong

• “2009 CCTV Spring Festival Gala Line-up” Leaked

  

  Micah Sittig translated a post on Zhangjiang BBS, purporting to be a leaked copy of the “2009 CCTV Spring Festival Gala Line-up“(the server is no longer available anymore). Here selects some funny excerpts from the blog post.

  2.小合唱《因为爱所以爱肉体岂能拿来慷慨》表演者：绿帽组，主唱：谢霆锋

  5.小品<老虎来了>表演者:周正龙

  15.体育杂技：《三个俯卧撑》 表演者：翁安县公-安局

  2. Choir piece “Why you gotta go and do that love huh?”, performed by the Green Hat Group, lead singer Nicholas Tse

  5. Comedic skit “The boy who cried tiger”, performed by Zhou Zhenglong

  15. Athletic acrobatics: “Three push-ups”, performed by Weng’an County Police Department

  The post makes fun of 15 major events that happen in China in the year 2008.  CDT has coverage of most of them. For instance, please see the CDT tag Edison Chen if you are interested in No.2 on the list. For No.5, read the tag SouthChina Tiger.  And read this article, “Netizens’ Anger and Wit Against Online Censorship”
  as well if you are interested in No.15.

  » Read more
  • October 30, 2008 9:29 AM

• Video: Ying Chan on Chinese Media Censorship

  

  Ying Chan, director of Hong Kong University’s journalism program, presents a recently published collection of fifteen essays from some of China’s top journalists. The essays touch on many issues ranging from classic censorship to the rise of blogs. (h/t Danwei)

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  • October 28, 2008 1:00 PM

• Tainted Eggs From China Discovered in Hong Kong

  

  From New York Times:

  Hong Kong food inspectors have found eggs imported from northeast China to be contaminated with high levels of melamine, the toxic industrial additive at the heart of an adulteration scandal in Chinese milk products.

  The findings, reported over the weekend, have raised new concerns that a far wider array of China-produced foods than previously believed could be contaminated with melamine, which has already sickened more than 50,000 children in China and led to at least four deaths.

  Scientists in China worry that in addition to being used to adulterate dairy supplies, melamine may have been intentionally added to animal feed in China, according to a report published on Sunday in South China Morning Post. Tainted chicken and possibly fish and hog feed could result in poisonous meat and seafood, it said.

  Read also China urged to halt melamine in eggs from Reuters.

  Also from HKU’s the China Media Project:

  As China’s poison milk scandal refused to slip into the past this weekend, Wen Jiabao promised a strong new approach to food safety issues. Addressing the Asia-Europe summit meeting on Saturday, Wen said China was pushing through a food safety law that would prohibit addition of harmful chemicals in foods and empower the government to “ban the sale of and recall unsafe food products if companies fail to do so voluntarily after products are found to be contaminated.”

  The new law, it seems, cannot come quickly enough.

  China’s latest melamine-tainted food incident — this time affecting chicken eggs and related products — has quietly emerged over the past ten days. Even as it is beleaguered with recalls from three neighboring economies, however, China’s largest egg products manufacturer, Dalian Hanwei Enterprise Group, has failed to announce its own recalls or to explain publicly what action it is taking.

  » Read more
  • October 26, 2008 9:58 PM

• The “Red Capitalist” Family Being Investigated as Citic Suffers

  

  Citic Pacific, a Hong Kong unit of Citic Group, the largest Chinese state-owned investment company, suffers tremendous losses from unauthorized trades. From Financial Times,

  The Hong Kong-listed arm of China International Trust and Investment Corp (Citic), China’s largest state-owned investment group, had committed itself to large purchases of Australian dollars and euros on the assumption that the two currencies would continue to appreciate against the US dollar.

  After the opposite trend emerged this summer, Citic Pacific found itself saddled with losses of US$1.88bn at current mark-to-market prices. That is more than three times the US$560m the company booked in profit for the first six months of this year. On Tuesday, Citic Pacific’s shares fell 55 per cent to HK$6.52, meaning the estimated forex losses now exceed the company’s market capitalisation.

  With the US dollar strengthening dramatically since the onset of the global financial crisis, Citic Pacific’s losses could widen even further. The company must mark-to-market for reporting purposes on December 31. Nor will its problems end with the new year. Citic Pacific is contracted to buy more than A$9bn through October 2010.

  Here is also a BBC report on YouTube.

  Rong Yiren, who was called “the Red Capitalist,” founded Citic in 1978 and later became the Vice President of the People’s Republic of China. His son, Larry Yung Chi Kin, is now the chairman of Citic Pacific, whose accountability is under questions., and his daughter, Frances Yung Ming-fong, has already been punished. From the Standard,

  Frances Yung Ming-fong, the 36-year-old daughter of chairman Larry Yung Chi-kin, has been removed from the finance department and demoted with a salary cut, along with another colleague, CITIC managing director Henry Fan Hung-ling confirmed to The Standard.

  [...] Fan defended the firm’s decision not to sack Frances Yung by saying she held a “more junior” position and that the report of auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers suggested the two former finance chiefs were far more culpable.

  [...]Frances Yung’s name only came to light yesterday after independent market commentator David Webb pointed out her title of director, group finance. “The daughter certainly knows what’s going on,” Webb said, adding CITIC Pacific’s corporate governance policy was defective.

  According to Bloomberg, Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission has also started a formal investigation on Citic Pacific.

  For more about the recent finicial cirsis, see CDT’s tag finicial crisis 2008.

  » Read more
  • October 22, 2008 12:56 PM

• After Toy Factory Closure, Blame Game Begins

  

  Hong Kong-listed toymaking company Smart Union was forced to close its massive factory in Dongguan, Guangdong province down last week, laying off 7,000 workers in the process. The BBC reports:

  A Chinese toymaker which supplied firms including US giant Mattel has gone out of business with the loss of up to 7,000 jobs.

  Rising raw material and labour costs and slowing US demand forced Smart Union to close its doors this week.

  Workers have since been protesting outside the firm’s factories and a government building in Guangdong province to demand their unpaid wages.

  See this video from BBC World News for more about worker unrest surrounding the shut down of toy factories in China.

  Laid-off Smart Union assembly line workers have greeted the plant’s closure with rage directed not only at the toymaker’s management, but also at the credit crisis still gripping Wall Street. From AP:

  “This financial crisis in America is going to kill us. It’s already taking food out of our mouths,” the 42-year-old laborer [Wang Wenming] said Friday as he stood outside the shuttered Smart Union Group (Holdings) Ltd. factory in the southern city of Dongguan.

  [...]Economic upheaval in the U.S. is already changing and shrinking China’s vast manufacturing hub in the southern province of Guangdong, long regarded as the world’s factory floor.

  [...]Already, China’s toy industry is hurting. The official Xinhua News Agency reported this week that 3,631 toy exporters — 52.7 percent of the industry’s enterprises — went out of business in 2008. The causes: higher production costs, wage increases for workers and the rising value of the yuan, the report said.

  However, in a China Daily editorial, You Nuo’s opinion is that poor or corrupt management is to blame for Smart Union’s collapse and others like it, not the evaporation of global demand. He points out that thousands of toymakers had gone out of business well before the eruption of the U.S. financial crisis:

  But wait a minute. These reports also reflect something like a trend, the closures of toy factories, and that the trend had started long before the Wall Street started to panic. How much those factory closures were really linked with things in the U.S., contrary to what is generally reported or believed, is actually quite vague, and not readily supported by the data from across the Pacific.

  As information leaked out of Dongguan reveals, especially from the suppliers to the Hong Kong toy-makers, there had been signs of their failing business for quite some time. They reported about continuous internal strifes that affected business policies and shop-floor management. If that is the case, it should not be attributed only to the U.S. crisis. It would be a case of management failure, perhaps one in which some company leaders stole the revenue that should have been shared by workers, shareholders, and suppliers.

  You concludes by calling for an investigation into any possible embezzlement by the management of the failed toy companies:

  If it is found that some did steal company profit from the Chinese mainland for investing in new companies elsewhere, to seek cheaper labor and lower taxes, they should be brought to trial.

  Kenneth Tan at the Shanghaiist has his own reading of You’s editorial, particularly in regards to that last paragraph :

  Expect heads to be brought to the chopping board soon. The Dongguan government is now coughing RMB24 million out of its own pocket to quell simmering unrest by paying the 7,000 laid off workers their wages, and we all know there is no such thing as a free lunch.

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  • October 20, 2008 10:26 PM

• This Is Why Hong Kong English Levels Are Declining

  

  Canadian journalist Joyce Lau writes in her blog about some observations about teaching English in Hong Kong, wherein her brother was denied a teaching post, even though he was a native speaker of English:

  A potential employer basically told him he would not be hired because he is not white. The explanation was that his English is “not native English enough” because his skin is not white.

  [...]I told an American colleague this, expecting outrage. But he just shrugged. His argument was Chinese parents don’t know better. Schools, being profit-seeking companies, just want to please parents, so they play into their prejudices. It’s not the parents’ or educators’ fault, it’s the government’s fault for not legislating.

  [...]But, typical for Hong Kong, they will put appearances (”face” for Chinese parents to brag about their token white teacher) before actually teaching our children.

  Read more about Hong Kong’s Anti-Racism Law.

  Joyce Lau also comments in her blog on the importance of English declining in Hong Kong due to the increasing need to learn Mandarin (or Putonghua), the standard dialect of Mainland China, after its return in 1997 from British rule.

  An article from The Economist corresponds these sentiments in an article about Hong Kong lifting a requirement to teach Cantonese, a native dialect, in its schools.
  In related news, a recent article on Xinhua reports on the 14th National English Speech Contest that reinforces the importance of learning English in Mainland China:

  Learning English became a fashion and even a fever since China adopted its reform and opening-up policy 30 years ago. Almost all college students in the country study English as a touching stone to apply for overseas studies. In recent years, English skill has become a necessary quality to get a good job.

  For a long time, English teaching in China emphasized more on reading and writing instead of listening and speaking, therefore, students could easily get high exam scores despite poor spoken English.

  Liu Xianghong, a Ministry of Education official, said the competition not only gives students a platform to showcase their language skill, but also encourages Chinese schools to improve communication-oriented teaching methods of English.

  Related to teaching English is Li Yang’s Crazy English phenomenon where teaching English is promoted to a nationalist agenda. See also CDT’s articles on Crazy English.

  » Read more
  • October 17, 2008 12:52 PM

• Are Chinese Racist or Simply Politically Incorrect?

  
  

  Barack Obama, U.S. presidential candidate, (Flickr photo/PEEL)

  Allen Yu from Fool’s Mountain: Blogging for China comments on a recent Times article about the U.S. presidential candidate, Barack Obama, and racism in Asia, and debates whether it is racism or political correctness:

  It’s common knowledge that when it comes to racial remarks, Chinese people (and perhaps Asians in general) are not the most politically correct people in the world… Recently, I came across an interesting article in Times Magazine (in relation to the U.S. Presidential politics) regarding racism in Asia. Unfortunately, I believe the author falls into many pitfalls that many Westerners make when it comes to Asian racism.

  The article started out fair enough:

  “Early this year my wife and I watched Venus Williams, one of the world’s finest tennis players, compete in Hong Kong. During the match several young men sitting near us kept referring in Cantonese to Williams as “black demon,” as well as another unprintable epithet. They shut up when my wife, an American citizen who is ethnic Chinese, berated them for their racist language. (Williams, by the way, won the tournament.) What, I wonder today, would those men say about Barack Obama, who soon could be the U.S.’s first African-American President?”

  While the term “black demon” (黑鬼) can be used as a derogatory term for black people (equivalent terms for white people include 洋鬼子 (western demons) and 鬼佬 (foreign devils)), in the South, especially in the Canton area, the term 黑鬼 appears to have been incorporated into daily language and currently carries no derogatory connotation.

  To really carry negative connotations in the Cantonese dialect (one of the most “colorful” of Chinese dialects), you would have to add explicit expletives as in 死黑鬼) - i.e. “damn black demon.”

  And while misunderstanding of racism by a Western journalist is understandable, the history of discrimination is not completely unfounded. The original Times article by Zoher Abdoolcarim continues on the anti-racism law in Hong Kong and the idea of institutional racism in other Asian countries:

  In many countries, ethnic divisions are institutionalized, with strict laws governing what one race can and cannot do. In largely homogenous Japan, it’s extremely difficult for a non-Japanese to become a citizen even if born there. In Malaysia, an affirmative-action program gives preference to Malays over the country’s sizable Chinese and Indian populations in everything from university places to government contracts. In Pakistan, Punjabis, the dominant ethnic group, are favored for key positions in the powerful military and civil service. Government leaders argue that these kinds of measures help maintain harmony. Maybe so, but it is a superficial harmony that reinforces stereotypes and hinders the creation, in the long run, of genuine tolerance and understanding.

  Even Hong Kong, one of the world’s worldliest cities (and where TIME has its Asian headquarters), can be astonishingly parochial. For instance, Hong Kong enacted antidiscrimination legislation only very recently. Before, it was perfectly legal for a landlord to deny renting an apartment to an otherwise qualified tenant simply because of his or her skin color. One of my colleagues, an Indian national who has lived in Hong Kong for more than two years, still gets stopped by police for no given reason and told to present his ID. When he complains, the cops merely shrug. In Asia, it is acceptable to be racist, or at least unapologetic about being so.

  A similar argument on race and the U.S. presidential race has been debated in Japan in the Asahi Shimbun.

  While the Times article comments on general racism, more news stories have focused on ethnic minority discrimination.

  Read also CDT’s stories on Chinese racism and the Chinese reactions to the current 2008 U.S. election.

  » Read more
  • October 17, 2008 9:48 AM

• More Ban For the Buck in China

  

  Karen Chu and Steven Schwankert from the Hollywood Reporter write on the Pusan International Film Festival, running from October 2-10, 2008, where Hong Kong director Tsui Hark’s film was recently pulled by Chinese film censors:

  Screening a Chinese-made film internationally without a permit guarantees a ban for the film’s theatrical release in China and could result in sanctions for its producers and director.

  However, a banned film in China can garner international attention. The article continues:

  Lou Ye’s 2006 “Summer Palace” screened at the Festival de Cannes as an official competition entry before Chinese censors approved it, resulting in a five-year ban for Lou from making films in China. However, it was picked up by U.S. and French distributors. The film’s producer, Fang Li, subsequently produced “Lost in Beijing,” which also was banned in China after a theatrical run.

  International buyers agree that these controversies attract attention. “It creates a buzz for the film. I would certainly try to look at a film that is banned,” said Jerome Bliah, president of International Films Distribution Consultants.

  On the other hand, Feng Xiaogang’s film “Assembly” won several awards at the Pyongyang International Film Festival in North Korea.  See also the entire story, “Assembly” wins highest prize at Pyongyang int’l film festival” by Xinhua News Agency.

  » Read more
  • October 3, 2008 1:45 AM

• Carrying the Can for China’s Tragedies

  

  From Asia Times Online:

  China has unleashed a “storm of punishment” for top officials linked to tragedies like the Sanlu milk powder scandal and deadly catastrophes in its mining and transport industries, but it remains unclear how far it is willing to take this newfound push for accountability.

  Chinese commentators say the sacking of a number of senior Chinese officials in the wake of the tragic incidents, including several at the ministerial level, marks the start of a new official system of accountability, even for the state’s upper echelons.

  But the official criteria for holding leaders accountable remains unclear, and its implementation vague and sometimes very arbitrary. To make the system work effectively, standards are needed to clarify which level of officials are to be held accountable and for what kinds of incidents.

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  • September 30, 2008 7:58 AM

• Somali Pirates Seize Hong Kong Ship; 24 Chinese Crew Members on Board

  

  From Xinhua:

  Armed Somali pirates hijacked Wednesday a Hong Kong bulk carrier with 25 crew members, 24 of them Chinese, off the Somali coast, the Chinese embassy in Nairob confirmed.

  The bulk carrier owned by Sinotrans of Hong Kong was en route from Tunisia to Pipavav, India when it was hijacked off the eastern coast of Somalia, the 14th of such seizure by the pirates in the past two months, said Andrew Mwangura, an coordinator of the East Africa Seafarers Assistance Program (SAP).

  Additional details from AFP:

  Somali pirates seized a Greek ship and a Hong Kong-flagged vessel in the latest in a string of attacks that have prompted calls for international action, officials said on Thursday.

  [...] Hijackers also took the Hong Kong-flagged Great Creation on Wednesday with its 25 crew — 24 Chinese and one Sri Lankan. The ship was headed to the Indian port of Pipavav from Tunisia, said Andrew Mwangura who runs the Kenya chapter of the Seafarers Assistance programme.

  Mwangura told AFP the ship was being taken to Eyl, a pirate lair in Somalia’s northern breakaway state of Puntland.

  » Read more
  • September 18, 2008 9:01 PM

• Moms Turn to Hong Kong for Safe Milk

  

  From China Daily:

  Mothers on the mainland, terrified of their babies becoming the next victims of the baby milk scandal, are turning to Hong Kong for safe food for their infants.

  An official at the customs checkpoint in Luohu, which links Shenzhen and Hong Kong, told China Daily yesterday there has been a dramatic rise in the amount of baby formula being brought in from the special administrative region.

  “There has been a huge increase in the number of mainlanders coming back from Hong Kong with milk powder,” the customs’ press officer Wang Jing said.

  “Over the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, people were coming back with an average of two boxes, 12 cans, each, which is twice the average before the scandal.”

  Read also a comment from John Pomfret about the current trend away from breastfeeding in Chinese society:

  …Scratch the surface and China seems to have turned away from breastfeeding just as we in the United States have embraced it. In the ’40s and ’50s American women were inveigled to abandon the breast and replace it with formula. Science! in the form of milk powder and super nutrients would make baby strong! After a few decades, we’d junked those ideas and now in the 21st century we’ve re-embraced the breast. Just the opposite with the Chinese. In the ’40s and ’50s, breastfeeding was universal in China. The country was too poor to afford formula.

  But as China grew richer in the ’70s and ’80s, its women turned away from breastfeeding. Now, according to the All-China Women’s Federation, only 47 percent of Chinese women breastfeed and most specialists think that the numbers are actually lower. One study noted that breastfeeding rates around Beijing were as low as 13.6 percent at four months in the 1990s down from more than 80 percent in early 1950s.

  Despite a nationwide campaign to encourage breastfeeding, the same call — Science! — has convinced many to do away with the breast pump and embrace formula. In addition, the structure of the Chinese family — more working mothers, the babies raised by grandparents — makes the use of formula so much more convenient. And in this case so much more harmful to the poor children who drank the tainted brew from the Sanlu milk company.

  » Read more
  • September 18, 2008 3:14 PM

• HK Democrats Could Gain After Polls, Analysts Say

  

  From AP:

  Hong Kong’s pro-democracy politicians fared better than expected in legislative elections, a showing that could strengthen their hand in pushing for greater political freedoms in the Chinese territory, analysts said.

  The opposition camp captured 23 of 60 legislative seats in Sunday’s voting, down from their previous 26, according to poll results released Monday.

  Many observers had predicted a far worse beating for the opposition parties as their signature issue — democratic reform — took a back seat to concerns over wages, inflation and poverty this year. A resurgent nationalism, heightened by last month’s Beijing Olympics and a booming mainland economy, was expected to further hurt their chances.

  Instead, they won enough seats to hold onto their veto power and block conservatives from redrawing Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, to Beijing’s liking.

  » Read more
  • September 8, 2008 5:41 PM

• Democrats Face Key Test as Hong Kong Votes (Updated)

  

  AFP reports on the relatively low turnout for elections in Hong Kong today:

  Despite warm sunshine in the afternoon, official figures showed only about 45 percent of registered voters cast their ballots, down from the nearly 56 percent turnout in 2004.

  The vote was expected to provide a barometer for pro-democracy parties in the former British colony in the face of growing Chinese patriotism, with results expected early Monday.

  Only 30 of the 60 legislative seats were being chosen by the city’s 3.37 million registered electors. The remaining 30 “functional constituencies” represent various business and industry interests chosen by select electorates.

  Update: From AP:

  Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp has won more than a third of seats in legislative elections, retaining its veto power over major legislation.

  Results announced Monday show the opposition has claimed at least 22 of 60 seats in the legislature. The key threshold for pro-democracy parties was 21 seats — a number that would allow them to block major legislation that requires a two-thirds majority for passage.

  » Read more
  • September 7, 2008 4:43 PM

• China’s ‘Through-Train’ Test

  

  China’s experiment with letting mainlanders invest in the Hong Kong stock market, launched last August and dubbed the “through train”, has yet to take off. From the Wall Street Journal:

  When China’s foreign-exchange regulator announced its trial plan on Aug. 20 last year, it sent the benchmark Hang Seng Index soaring some 55% in just 10 weeks. Investors dreamed of a massive inflow of cash-rich mainland investors, who had been fueling a bull run in the Shanghai and Shenzhen share markets.

  But not long after the announcement, signs already were apparent that Beijing regulators were having second thoughts about the impact of their plan. Authorities expressed concerns over the possibility that the through train would drain too much money from mainland exchanges, and that unsophisticated mainland Chinese investors could suffer big losses in the rough and tumble of global markets.

  Yet since then, central-government leaders have grown increasingly vocal about another pressing concern: too much money flowing into China, and not enough flowing out. As foreign reserves hit a record high of $1.81 trillion at the end of June, up from $1.68 trillion in March, Beijing blamed speculative inflows and vowed to more closely monitor foreign companies and investors doing business in China. A program like the through train would narrow the fund-flow gap by providing an outlet for capital bottled up in the domestic markets by Beijing’s strict capital-control regime.

  » Read more
  • August 22, 2008 8:36 PM

• Typhoon Nuri Sweeps into China

  

  Typhoon Nuri has crashed into China’s southern shore, killing three people and shutting down Hong Kong. From Al Jazeera:

  Nuri made landfall in the southern province of Guangdong in the late evening and was downgraded to a severe tropical storm.

  Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from coastal areas and fishing boats called back to port.

  Torrential rain is expected over the weekend as Nuri moves northwest along the Guangdong coastline ebbing towards Macau where flights and ferries have also been cancelled.

  Also see this report from the Financial Times.

  And here’s some video of trees swinging shot from someone’s apartment window.

  » Read more
  • August 22, 2008 7:59 PM