Central Propaganda Department: Without exception, do not report or comment on [information] about “Occupy Central” in Hong Kong that has not yet been unified and planned. Do not quote related information from overseas media or websites. Please strictly comply. (May 14, 2013)

中宣部：对香港“占领中环”行动一事未统一安排一律不报道、不评论，不转引境外媒体及网上相关消息。请严格遵照执行。

Protesters plan to “occupy” Central, the busy downtown of Hong Kong, in July 2014 if Hong Kong citizens do not have universal suffrage by that point. The International Herald Tribune covered Occupy Central in April, while the South China Morning Post has a page dedicated to the topic.

Guangdong Propaganda Department: On the evening of May 9, employee Wu Taihui jumped from the administrative offices of the Zhongyi Industrial Park in Dongguan. Except for [information] issued by authoritive departments, the media are to stop reporting and commenting on this incident. (May 15, 2013)

广东省委宣传部：5月9日晚东莞中意工业园行政办公楼发生的员工吴太辉坠楼事件，除权威部门发布外，各媒体不再报道，评论。

Wu, who had just been fired, was at the factory to settle his wages, according to his widow [zh].

Central Propaganda Department: The media are not to sensationalize, exaggerate, or comment on the incident in Wanning, Hainan Province in which an elementary school put female students in a hotel room overnight. You may report in an orderly manner according to information issued by authoritative departments. (May 15, 2013)

中宣部：关于海南万宁小学带女学生开房过夜一事，各媒体不炒作渲染、不评论。可依据权威部门发布的信息有序报道。

Four girls were brought to a hotel room in Wanning and sexually assaulted by their school headmaster. A government official brought another two girls to a hotel in nearby Haikou. Doctors who examined the girls reported they are still virgins, but they were bruised and appear “groggy” in surveillance footage.

CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date on CDT Chinese is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, children's rights, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, dongguan, Guangdong, Hainan, hong kong elections, Ministry of Truth, Occupy Central, occupy movement, propaganda, sexual violence, suicide
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Many Chinese traveled to Sichuan to volunteer. Charities were inundated with donations. By February 2011, the Red Cross Society of China, a member of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, had received about $650 million in donations from within China and abroad for that quake, according to a report on the Web site of the official China News Service.

But the Red Cross became a pariah in the eyes of many Chinese after a scandal two years ago that centered on Guo Meimei, a 20-year-old woman who had posted photographs of herself online posing next to Italian sports cars, hoarding Hermès handbags and flying in business-class cabins. She said on her microblog that she was the “commercial general manager” at the Red Cross. People speculated about whether she had gotten her title by being the mistress of a top Red Cross official. She became the most talked-about subject on the Chinese Internet during those months, and her name invariably comes up in discussions of philanthropy here.

As a result, Chinese are saying on microblogs and other forums that people who want to give to current relief efforts in Sichuan should, without a doubt, avoid the Red Cross.

[…] The Red Cross Society of China declined to comment for this article. Zhao Baige, an executive vice president at the organization, told a reporter from Southern Metropolis Daily that there were may online critics who had deep-rooted misunderstandings and prejudices toward the group.

China Real Time’s Josh Chin reported the immediate and visceral backlash against the Chinese Red Cross on Saturday, when its announcement on Sina Weibo that it had dispatched an investigation team was met with thumbs down and worse:

“Little Red, you’ve really lost the people’s hearts,” read one of the few responses suitable for print on the website of a family newspaper.

“Investigate your [expletive] you gang of swindlers,” went another.

Why so much vitriol?

Unlike most Red Cross organizations, which operate independently of government, the Chinese Red Cross has close ties to the state. For several decades after the Communist victory in 1949, it was an actual government agency, operating essentially as a branch of the Ministry of Health. Although now separate from the ministry, it maintains active links with health officials and is one of only a handful of organizations officially allowed to solicit contributions from Chinese citizens.

For much of its existence, that semi-official status gave the Chinese Red Cross clout that Red Cross branches in other countries lacked, but it has also helped make the organization a target for public anger over official corruption.

Though photos have shown Red Cross collection boxes sitting empty, the organization had in fact collected over 50 million yuan by Saturday evening, according to Global Times. But as the newspaper’s Chen Tian reported, more public donations were flowing through new platforms set up by China’s Internet giants:

Sina Micro-charities, which was launched this February, had initiated 29 quake relief projects with the help of institutions and individuals for the hardest-hit city of Ya’an by Sunday morning, according to a notice posted on the platform late Sunday.

The Sina Micro-charity projects, which allow the public to donate money with debit cards, credit cards or the online payment platform Alipay, have gathered nearly 80.4 million yuan ($13.01 million) from more than 60,000 Internet users.

Meanwhile, other Internet service providers offering online payment platforms, including Tencent and Alipay, have collected tens of millions of yuan in donations for the quake-hit areas.

[…] Wang Zhenyao, president of Beijing Normal University’s One Foundation Philanthropy Research Institute, told the Global Times that the [Sina] platform offers information in a way that allows donors to know where their money is going.

“The purpose of each micro-charity project is clear and highly targeted, and the project timelines track how the funds are utilized,” Wang said. “This reassures people and makes them want to donate.”

Disillusionment with the fate of money sent to the mainland has spawned an anti-donation campaign in Hong Kong, with participants seeking to block a proposed HK$100 million package from the government. Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying has insisted that although he “supports all national measures against graft […] financially, the Hong Kong society should donate to the people affected” on a basis of “love, care and support for compatriots.” But in an online poll at South China Morning Post, 92% opposed the donation, even if conditions are imposed to prevent misuse. Online polls are unscientific and notoriously easy to manipulate, but there were many expressions of opposition through other channels as well. From Emily Tsang and Joshua But at South China Morning Post:

Such reluctance comes in sharp contrast to the generosity that followed the Sichuan earthquake five years ago, when the government gave HK$10 billion, and non-government groups raised HK$15 billion from the public.

[…] The Democratic Party and the Civic Party said they would decide today whether to support the government’s proposed donation. Democratic Party chairwoman Emily Lau Wai-hing said she received many objections about the funding plan.

“I am deeply sorry and feel sympathy for the disaster … but the mainland lacks a system rather than money. I do not wish to see the money fall into the pockets of corrupt officials,” Lau said.

[…] “HK$100 million could be used in many better ways to help Hong Kong, rather than wasting it on the mainland bureaucracy,” one user wrote. Another said: “I doubt that even one dollar in a 100 would really go to helping the victims.”

Senior journalists familiar with mainland affairs also reminded Hongkongers to think twice before donating. They said some of the money raised five years ago was wasted on fancy meals and building unused roads. A HK$2 million secondary school was built with donations but torn down after 11 months to make way for luxury flats.

Updated at 2:00 PST, April 23: On Twitter, SCMP’s George Chen clarifies that funds used for the demolished school were returned:

HK gov confirms a HK-funded school after 2008 #earthquake was removed by local gov. Built in 2010 w/ HK$2M donation. Sichuan gov returned $.

— George Chen (@george_chen) April 23, 2013

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, 2013 Sichuan earthquake, alibaba, charity, disaster relief, guo meimei, natural disasters, Red Cross, sina, tencent
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In 1997, not long before the handover to which she had reluctantly agreed, Lady Thatcher, as she now was, came to Hong Kong to deliver a highly paid speech to the Chinese and British Chambers of Commerce. I was now East Asia Editor ofThe Times of London. The day before her speech she asked to walk about central Hong Kong, accompanied by local and foreign reporters. Suddenly she declared, “I must buy some socks for Denis,” her husband, who was in London. A nearby Marks & Spencer was cleared and police stood in the doorway. I trotted to the unguarded back door and inside saw Lady Thatcher at the sock counter with a young saleswoman. She was just saying she had forgotten her money. I paid for the socks; she took the bag, didn’t thank me, and went outside. I left by the back door. Another minute.

[...] The next night I waited outside the banqueting hall where Lady Thatcher was to give her speech. I would be admitted to the hall after the meal. When it ended the doors flew open and guests rushed to the toilets. There was a long queue outside the ladies’. Mrs. Thatcher bustled over and exclaimed, “I must get back into the hall for my speech.” I told her to wait right there, went into the gents’, where there were ten or so men; I asked them to leave because Lady Thatcher needed to come in. Zipping up, they left. “Go ahead in,” I said to Lady Thatcher. “I’ll stand at the door.” She went in, after a minute to two came out, didn’t thank me, went back into the hall, and gave her speech with my suggestion included. Two minutes.

See also China Remembers Margaret Thatcher, via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989 protests, Hong Kong handover, jonathan mirsky, june 4, Margaret Thatcher, U.K.
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Keywords that dominated posts on Chinese blogs included positive words such as “historic”, “wise” and “great, according to data compiled by the social media consultancy Meltwater. More than 130 comments on her passing appeared on Sina Weibo every minute in the first three hours after news of her death broke.

[…] “You don’t have to worry about China, because China will not provide any new ideas to the world – not in the next few decades or century,” Hangzhou-based lawyer Yuan Yulai said quoting Thatcher in a reaction that has since been shared 7,500 times.

Kai-fu Lee, the former head of Google China and one of the most influential voices on Weibo, shared the historic picture of her and Chinese counterpart Zhao Ziyang signing the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, the bilateral treaty which secured the July 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China.

“Thatcher and who?” the IT-investor and prominent commentator Charles Xue quipped, when re-sharing the photo. Searches for Zhao Ziyang, who was purged in 1989 for siding with protestors at Tiananmen Square, are still blocked in China.

At China Real Time Report, Lilian Lin explained the place of the Hong Kong negotiations in Chinese memories

Many in China know her best for her stumble outside the Great Hall of the People in 1982 during a state visit. That stumble served as a metaphor for Ms. Thatcher’s visit, which marked a rare foreign-policy setback for a leader who took on both Argentina and the former Soviet Union. Bent on pressing for continued British sovereignty for Hong Kong, she met firm resistance from Deng. Records suggest their negotiations were less than pleasant. The Daily Telegraph quoted Deng as muttering to an aide: “I cannot talk to that woman, she is utterly unreasonable.”

“The Chinese public had a very complicated mentality towards this negotiation and frictions of the two parties, “ said Wang Yizhou, professor of School of International Studies of Peking University. “ But it has been a long time and Hong Kong returned to China smoothly, so people here are more impressed with her statesmanship, which kept Britain in the top rank of the world.”

In Hong Kong itself, Thatcher’s handling of the handover still has some sharp critics. From Te-Ping Chen, also at China Real Time:

“That marked a very, very dishonorable chapter in the history of the British Empire,” said Ms. [Emily] Lau, who argues that the former British prime minister “didn’t look after the well-being of Hong Kong people.”

Still, though, Martin Lee, a former Hong Kong legislator and the city’s best-known crusader for democracy, said that those years were a time of greater optimism about the city’s political future. […]

[…] On the eve of the 1997 handover, Mrs. Thatcher sounded an optimistic note in an interview, saying that she hoped Hong Kong would one day be a model for all of China. “Chinese people will come to Hong Kong, they’ll see and they’ll say why is it different, and what is the difference?” she said. “It is the same people, the same talents, but here there is a rule of law founded on the belief that each and every person matters in personal lives,” she said. Hong Kong, she said, “is a flagship of what the China people can do.”

While former Conservative candidate Richard Harris wrote at the South China Morning Post that Thatcher “always had a soft spot for the ordinary people of Hong Kong“, Australian foreign minister Bob Carr recalled her “unabashedly racist” warnings about Asian immigration. The South China Morning Post’s Tom Holland argued that Thatcher “had thrown away her best trump card” in the handover negotiations for the sake of blocking Hong Kong Chinese immigration to the U.K.:

In 1981, her government passed the British Nationality Act, introducing a new class of British citizen and denying the right of abode in Britain to those, like the majority of Hong Kong’s population, who were merely British subjects.

Years later, Monitor asked one senior member of Thatcher’s first cabinet why she had undermined her own negotiating position in this way. He answered that at the time Britain could not possibly have accepted mass immigration from Hong Kong.

But, protested Monitor, the actual number of migrants would have been small. Guaranteed the right of abode in Britain, Hongkongers would have felt secure at home, and London could have got an even better deal for them in Beijing.

Yes, admitted the former minister, but that’s not how the British newspapers would have portrayed it. There was no way, he said, we were going to risk headlines in the London press warning that three million Hong Kong Chinese were heading towards British shores. It would have been political suicide.

Global Times took a somewhat different view from Wang Yizhou’s assessment that Thatcher had “kept Britain in the top rank of the world”. Her rule, it suggested, was one of the final spasms of Britain’s, Europe’s and the West’s global dominance, though she “could well enter history as a distinctive female politician” nonetheless.

A political legacy is always hard to define, and the love and hatred still felt toward Thatcher are distinct. Joining hands with former US president Ronald Reagan, she played a crucial role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. During and after the Falklands War she impressed the world with her hard-line stance, which no Western politicians could compete with afterward.

[…] Her restoration of the British economy represented one of the last glorious achievements of Great Britain, or even Europe.

[…] The moment makes the man, or in this case, the woman. After Thatcher left office, there haven’t been any “iron men” or “iron ladies,” partly because the decline in European power means they cannot uphold an iron stance. The evolution of Western electoral culture makes politicians weak at solving domestic problems.

Also at Global Times, Tian Dewen of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences credited Thatcher with pioneering Western engagement with Beijing:

Thatcher was also [one of] the first Western leaders to propose that the West should press China to engage in international system, instead of excluding it. There were ideological reasons for this. Thatcher hoped “peaceful evolution” in China through the country’s engagement in the international system. However, Thatcher’s proposal also created external conditions for China’s reform and opening-up.

[…] As a right-wing politician, Thatcher was theoretically hostile to communist ideas.

However, on the other hand, she also realized that China’s development was inevitable and the development of China was of significance to the UK.

Historically speaking, as long as any politician can recognize these development trends, he or she is a friend to China anyway.

Actress Melissa Rayworth, who played Thatcher in a state-sponsored TV film, recalled attitudes towards her somewhat differently:

For weeks, we’d been shooting pivotal scenes that chronicled Thatcher’s meeting with Deng in 1982 to negotiate the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, at that point still 15 years away. This tiny, awkward moment — a re-creation of Thatcher’s brief stumble while walking down these very steps after that meeting with Deng in the Great Hall — seemed more important to them than any of her powerful speeches.

They needed the villain to be brought low.

They saw her not as a real person but as a cartoon bad guy – the embodiment of an empire that, in their eyes, had taken a piece of China more than a century before and held the Middle Kingdom hostage when it tried to get the island back.

In any case, some of Thatcher’s influence still lingers even in the Party itself, according to The Telegraph’s Tom Phillips last year:

At Shanghai’s China Executive Leadership Academy, one of the country’s most elite Communist Party schools, Thatcher’s philosophy has found its way onto a “crisis management” course that also focuses on the 2011 UK riots.

[…] Professor Li Min, a lecturer at the institution, said when it came to crisis management Britain’s former prime minister was a model of behaviour.

Baroness Thatcher might seem an unusual choice for the curriculum of an academy grooming the next generation of Chinese leaders. But faculty directors say Shanghai’s Leadership Academy is no ordinary Party school.

“We have an open attitude towards all civilisations that are useful to us, and [we] learn from them,” explained Professor Jiang Haishan, the anglophile head of its international program.

Thatcher has also provided inspiration to China’s neighbors, according to The Economist:

[… I]n South Korea Park Geun-hye, the country’s first female leader, who has been compared to Mrs Thatcher for years and has only encouraged the comparison, expressed “great sorrow” at her death.

Mrs Park now faces her own Falklands moment with the growlings from Pyongyang; but it is Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of Japan, who has been more recently inspired by Thatcher the warrior, in his confrontation with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. He admitted being moved to tears by the scene in the film “The Iron Lady” where Mrs Thatcher, played by Meryl Streep, speaks about the war in the House of Commons.

In Taiwan, meanwhile, Streep also starred in CTi News’ coverage of Thatcher’s death, replacing footage of Queen Elizabeth that had been used by mistake.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Deng Xiaoping, diaoyu islands, Hong Kong handover, immigration, Margaret Thatcher, Shinzo Abe, U.K.
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[...] In 2004 I decided to change my business model and convert the bookstore into a book bar. At that time, Hong Kong didn’t have any places combining the café and bookstore experiences. I had worked for years as a Starbucks store manager, so I was familiar with the café concept. I wanted to give the book bar a distinctive style, so I renamed it People’s Commune [People's Recreation Community in English], painted the walls red and tweaked the design a little bit before reopening. There weren’t many individual mainland tourists coming to Russell Street then; most of our customers were from Hong Kong. But we scraped by and made it through.

Later that year we began to get mainland visitors from cities like Beijing and Tianjin who were traveling on their own. Our sign said “People’s Commune” in Chinese, and our logo was Mao Zedong’s face, so maybe that caught their eye. Sometimes, customers would ask me questions like, “Hey boss, do you have any copies of Zhou Enlai’s Later Years?’ At the time I didn’t get it, I still wasn’t so familiar with books published in simplified characters. I would tell them that I’d look into it and found a couple of Hong Kong publishers with that book or maybe The Private Life of Chairman Mao. I wasn’t really into politics – we were primarily selling books about art and culture.

I thought it was strange. Why were mainlanders coming to my shop and asking me about these kinds of books? It turns out they were coming in out of curiosity, wondering what was going on in the People’s Commune.

We began selling more and more banned books in late 2004. People were interested in the power transition from [President] Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao [which was drawn out over two years]. Customers would come back and ask, “What else do you have?” They were really interested in what was going on during the leadership change and were unable to read anything about it on the mainland. We started off with a tiny shelf of political books, eventually it grew to take up a counter, and as sales continued to improve more of the store was taken up by banned books.

Update: See a Reuters video about the market for banned books, which includes an interview with Paul Tang, from November 2012:

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: arts censorship, banned books, cultural censorship
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In the raid, the officials arrested two masterminds of a parallel-goods trading syndicate storing the powder. The man and woman , aged 20 and 51 respectively, were both from Hong Kong.

Five parallel-goods traders – aged between 21 and 50, and all from Hong Kong – were also arrested at the Lo Wu border checkpoint. About 20kg of infant formula was found on them.

Chan Tsz-tat, customs’ syndicate crimes investigation bureau divisional commander, said the two masterminds were found withdrawing stock from the warehouse and distributing it to parallel-goods traders near the Sheung Shui MTR station.

The traders travelled across the border several times a day, with at least two tins of milk powder each time, he said.

Chan said the syndicate involved more than the five traders nabbed, and that the department was still looking into the case.

While many who smuggle baby formula have just found an easy way to make quick money, others are now bringing supplies into the mainland with more charitable goals. From another SCMP report:

Newly joined are professional-looking young men and women, middle-aged housewives, and veteran day-trippers, many of whom are Hong Kong citizens, said media reports.

By trading in two tins of infant formula in the mainland side of Lo Wu border checkpoint, they make an easy HK$60 to HK$80 per trip – considered decent pocket money by many.

“Anyone who travels to Hong Kong should buy two tins on your way back,” wrote blogger Shi Liqin on Weibo, “This good deed will benefit China’s babies.”

Some others disagreed and said they were worried it would harm China’s milk powder industry and consumers in the long-term.

“When will China ever produce its own high-quality baby formula milk?” wrote a blogger.

Foreign brands are jumping in to the fill the demand for formula and both Danone and New Zealand’s Fonterra announced plans this week to sell milk powder in China.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: children's health, food safety, infant formula, milk contamination
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China now has confirmed 16 cases of H7N9 nationwide, with patients ranging in age from 4 to 87, who became ill between Feb. 19 and March 31. The number of cases, while small, is large for the early stages of an outbreak, and some flu experts said the fact that they are spread over a relatively wide geographic area is reason for concern.

Among the people found to be infected, several are believed to have been in close contact with birds, including a 48-year-old who transported poultry, a 45-year-old poultry butcher and a 38-year-old chef.

Authorities stressed they have yet to find a case of human-to-human transmission, which would make the disease more dangerous; the cases they have seen appear to come from human contact with birds.

[…] Shanghai authorities moved Friday to destroy thousands of birds, ordering the closure of wholesale poultry markets and instructing vendors in smaller markets to immediately cull their chicken populations. Authorities had banned sales of live pigeon and ducks starting the morning after discovering H7N9 in samples taken from pigeons at three wholesale markets.

Hangzhou has also suspended live poultry trading and begun culling at one market after the city’s second case was traced to quails that had been bought there. Officials in Shanghai promised that vendors would receive compensation of at least half the market price for any birds destroyed, which Bloomberg World View contributor Adam Minter pointed out was likely to send some looking for better prices elsewhere, potentially encouraging the virus’ spread.

The Council on Foreign Relations’ Laurie Garrett, who has been tweeting frequent updates on the outbreak, told PRI’s The World that “this has all the hallmarks of potentially turning into a new and quite striking pandemic …. That doesn’t mean it will, it doesn’t mean it won’t, it just says that all the pieces are falling into the kind of worrisome places that we keep an eye on at this stage of an outbreak.” She expressed caution about official assurances that there has been no human-to-human transmission, and that no link exists with the thousands of floating pig carcasses that descended on Shanghai last month.

Vietnam, where food safety has already become a focal point for anti-Chinese sentiment, and Hong Kong, where a seven-year-old girl who visited Shanghai late last month has tested negative for the disease, have both temporarily banned imports of Chinese poultry. In Hong Kong, random temperature checks are being conducted at immigration points, while warning notices have appeared at Japanese airports. Taiwan has stepped up sanitization of poultry farms and monitoring of air travelers. Cross-strait passenger numbers are higher than usual because of the Qingming festival, but airline stocks have slumped amid worries that the outbreak will start to discourage people from flying.

China has won widespread praise, tinged with relief, for its apparent transparency over the outbreak, though questions still hang over the initial delay in reporting it. A World Health Organization spokesman described the government’s response as “excellent”, and the swift posting online of the new strain’s genetic sequence has assisted worldwide research into its characteristics and a possible vaccine (see below). But while there is a stark contrast with the shroud of official secrecy over the SARS outbreak ten years ago, participants in a ChinaFile conversation on the government’s handling of the situation pointed out that celebration may be premature. George Washington University law professor Donald Clarke, for instance, argued that “the problem is not just whether the government is sincerely interested in transparency. It’s whether it has the credibility that’s needed to make certain policies effective.”

The outbreak’s absence from Friday’s flagship Xinwen Lianbo broadcast on CCTV has not helped the credibility situation. Neither have accusations of a cover-up from the family of the second victim, or the fact that news of Nanjing’s first case came not through official channels but from Sina Weibo. Another dent came from some provincial authorities’ recommendations for avoiding the disease. From Stephen Chen and Lo Wei at South China Morning Post:

Gansu’s health commission, for instance, encouraged residents to go outdoors, preferably into wooded areas, for fresh air and sunshine. Listening to music was also deemed an effective way to keep the H7N9 virus at bay.

Massaging the side of one’s nose was also said to help, as was exposing parts of one’s legs and stomach to incense once a day.

Health authorities in the eastern province of Jiangsu suggested a long list of herbal drinks, including the popular ban lan gen, a type of root that is often taken to fight the flu and was prescribed during the Sars outbreak a decade ago.

Dr Fang Shimin, biologist and a popular science writer […] reminded people that Gansu health authorities have promoted the eating of pig’s feet as an effective treatment for various diseases, including Aids and cancer.

“The traditional Chinese medicine industry is trying to cash in,” he wrote.

The ban lan gen recommendation in particular has sparked ridicule, as well as nostalgia and some apparent panic-buying. From Offbeat China:

Not all are buying the official promotion of TCM and ban lan gen. Many Chinese netizens joked: “After 10 years, we have a new president. Yet when it comes to flu, we still have the same old ban lan gen, the miracle medicine.”

[…] Even Peopl’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese government, also stood out to calm down the ban lan gen frenzy. In an inforgraphic that laid out what ban lan gen can and cannot do in detail, the newspaper said: “Ban lan gen has nothing more than a placebo effect.”

Jokes and criticism, however, don’t mean people won’t buy ban lan gan. There are already news about ban lan gen being sold out in some pharmacies in Shanghai and Beijing. In a Weibo poll (China’s Twitter), netizens were asked whether they will consider buying ban lan gen in the face of H7N9 flu. The result was half and half. Among the 5000-something netizens who weighed in, about 49% said yes, they would buy just in case. About 44% said no, because they don’t buy the hype.

Photographs of dead birds apparently fallen from the sky have done little to soothe the online mood:

A lot of dead birds found in Nanjing and Chengdu. “@wenyunchao: 南京 @猫xiao囧：建邺区茶南小区拓园东小区，成都 @cdtv刘燕: 府南河twitter.com/wenyunchao/sta…”

— Yaxue Cao (@YaxueCao) April 5, 2013

The birds have reportedly tested negative for the flu virus, however.

Meanwhile, investigation of the new viral strain has continued around the world. From Simeon Bennett at Bloomberg:

The H7N9 strain, which is a new virus formed as a result of two others merging their genetic material, has features of viruses that are known to jump easily from birds to mammals, and a mutation that may help it attach to cells in the respiratory tract, said Ron Fouchier, a professor of molecular virology at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, in a telephone interview yesterday.

“That’s certainly not good news,” said Fouchier, who reviewed a gene sequencing of H7N9 published by Chinese health authorities. “This virus really doesn’t look like a bird virus anymore; it looks like a mammalian virus.”

[…] Fouchier authored a study last year that showed five genetic tweaks to the deadly H5N1 virus, which has killed more than 600 people since 2003, made it airborne in ferrets, the mammals whose response to flu most closely resembles that of humans.

[…] “This virus is certainly of more concern than the vast majority of bird flu viruses,” Fouchier said. “Most bird flu viruses that we know do not have these mutations.”

The outbreak poses the difficult question of whether to divert attention and resources towards the development of a vaccine, which would not reach mass availability for several months. From Ben Hirschler and Kate Kelland at Reuters:

“It is an incredibly difficult decision because once you make it you have to change from making seasonal flu vaccines and go to making a vaccine for this virus,” said Jeremy Farrar, a leading expert on infectious diseases and director of Oxford University’s research unit in Vietnam.

That could mean shortages of vaccine against the normal seasonal flu which, while not serious for most people, still costs thousands of lives.

[…] There is no evidence yet of person-to-person transmission of H7N9 flu, and scientists do not yet know how what the strain’s potential is to develop into a human pandemic. Wendy Barclay, a flu virologist at Imperial College London, said one major argument against moving too soon would be financial.

“There is a possibility now that flu researchers will all rush to work on H7N9 and grants will be awarded for intensive research to develop vaccines … and that could be pouring money down a drain because it could be that the barriers for this virus are high enough that we don’t need to worry about it.”

Nevertheless, the U.S. Center for Disease Control has begun preliminary work as a precaution. From Donald G. McNeil Jr. and Andrew Jacobs at The New York Times:

It will take at least a month to create the seed vaccine, even though the agency is speeding the process by building it from synthetic DNA rather than waiting for a virus sample to arrive from China, said Michael Shaw, associate laboratory director for the C.D.C.’s influenza division.

Because China has posted the genetic sequences of the virus on public databanks, it is possible to build the genes for the virus’s outer spikes in a laboratory and attach them to a viral “backbone” that has already been proven to grow well in labs and in the sterile chicken eggs in which flu vaccines are made.

Then the seed vaccine must be tested in ferrets. They will be vaccinated and given some time to grow antibodies, then a solution of the H7N9 flu will be squirted into their noses. Doctors will then have to wait a few days to see if they get sick.

“If everything works smoothly the first time, we could theoretically have it ready to send to manufacturers within four weeks,” Dr. Shaw said. “But some things, like ferrets, you can’t speed up.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: agriculture, bird flu, diseases, H7N9, Hangzhou, Nanjing, public health, SARS, Shanghai, traditional medicine, transparency, vaccines
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At The New York Times, Edward Wong summed up the sensitive social and environmental issues surrounding the mine, from which a leaked propaganda directive issued on Saturday warned domestic media away:

Ethnic tensions have played into the outrage over mining. Most of the mines in Tibet belong to large state-owned enterprises based in eastern China, and they mostly bring in ethnic Han managers and workers, shutting Tibetans out. Of the 83 miners buried by the Gyama avalanche last week, only two were Tibetan, according to official news reports.

Environmental concerns, though, have dominated. Scientists have documented significant problems brought by the ravages of the Gyama mine, which belongs to China Gold International Resources Corporation, a company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, that is a unit of the state-owned China National Gold Group.

A paper published in 2010 by Science of the Total Environment, a journal, discussed the impact of mining activities on the surface water in the valley, including on streams that feed the Lhasa River. The researchers found elevated concentrations of six metals in the surface water and streambeds in the middle and upper reaches of the valley. These “pose a considerably high risk to the local environment,” according to a summary; meanwhile, pools of heavy metals were “a great potential threat to downstream water users.”

Establishing the mine at Gyama resulted in the relocation of nomads who had roamed the valley and grazed their animals there. The forced settlement of nomads is a policy that Communist Party officials have been pushing for years in many parts of Tibet, despite the widespread resentment it causes.

chinadialogue, meanwhile, highlighted its own article from 2011 reporting local Tibetans’ protests at the mine’s environmental impact, and warning of the area’s seismic instability.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: migrant workers, mines, mining, mining accidents, natural disasters, nomads, Tibet, Tibet environment, water pollution
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The new Hong Kong law stipulates a penalty of up to $64,500 and two years in prison for anyone convicted of breaking the milk powder export limit.

At Hong Kong’s international airport, the public address system informed passengers that they were not permitted to carry out more than two cans of powdered milk formula.

Mainland traders are known in Hong Kong as “locusts,” for stripping store shelves of milk powder and other consumer goods for resale across the border. The booming milk powder trade in Hong Kong was fueled by fears on the mainland that domestically produced baby formula is tainted with industrial chemicals.

Rowdy demonstrations by Hong Kong residents protesting the cross-border consumer-goods trade last year helped turn milk powder into a powder keg threatening relations between Hong Kong and the mainland. Hong Kong parents complain that they are unable to find baby formula for their own children.

The accused included 26 Hong Kong residents, 18 mainlanders and one person with a foreign passport, according to the South China Morning Post. A number of tainted baby formula scandals have hit China in recent years – thousands of children fell ill with kidney problems in 2008 from milk powder tainted with the industrial chemical melamine – and mainland mothers have since turned to places such as Hong Kong and even Australia for their baby food. More recently, a cancer-causing element was found in samples of a mainland dairy company last year.

China’s health minister called the smuggling of infant formula a “temporary problem” in Beijing on Monday, according to the Financial Times. Checking in from the sidelines of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) on Sunday, the South China Morning Post noted a mixed bag of opinions on the issue among the members of China’s top political consultative body:

Wang Xudong, head of the School of Information Technology at Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, lashed out at Hong Kong’s measures, calling them strict.

“The Hong Kong government is way out of line…[It] only cares about Hong Kong’s babies, not at all for the ones on the mainland. [It thinks] it isn’t enough to only seize milk powder, but even imprison the carriers,” Wang said.

…

Other CPPCC members called for a serious crackdown on food safety violators after an seemingly endless stream of scandals in China. They said food safety issues were at the core of the milk power controversy.

Three-time CPPCC member Pan Qinglin from Tianjin urged heavier punishment on offenders. “I suggest imposing the death penalty to [foodmakers who put people in danger]… [Food fabrication] has damaged the image of the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: baby formula, children's health, CPPCC, dairy industry, food safety, food scandal, milk contamination, smuggling
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In a paper submitted to the legislature this week, the government proposed blocking public access to the personal information of company directors. Such a change would pose a threat to “most of the investigative reporting in Hong Kong,” said Mak Yin-ting, who chairs the Hong Kong Journalists Association and calls the proposal the biggest threat to local press freedom since the city’s showdown over a proposed anti-subversion law in 2003.

Currently, the public is allowed to access to the full addresses and ID numbers of company directors via company registry searches. If passed, the changes included in the government’s new Companies Ordinance would stop the public from being able to easily view such data from next year.

Such information has been at the heart of numerous investigative reports in the past year, Ms. Mak said, citing stories that embarrassed multiple local cabinet members as well as blockbuster exposés of Chinese official wealth by Bloomberg and the New York Times, among others. Hong Kong is frequently used as a haven by Chinese officials seeking to obscure their finances in a tangle of local companies.

See also CDT coverage of the two reports mentioned above, including The New York Times investigation into the business dealings of prime minister Wen Jiabao and a lengthy report published by Bloomberg about the wealth of new Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his family.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Hong Kong journalists, investigative journalism, muckraking, press freedom
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In Thursday testimony, expert witness Capt. Nigel Pryke said his analysis suggested the main fault for the crash lay with the captain of the Sea Smooth, a commuter ferry that was carrying passengers from Hong Kong Island to the dock at Lamma Island, an idyllic bedroom community popular with expatriates located off the coast of Hong Kong.

Maritime rules dictate that when two vessels are about to experience a head-on collision, each are supposed to turn starboard, or right, thus avoiding a crash. While the Lamma IV altered its course 13 degrees starboard, Mr. Pryke noted that the Sea Smooth captain turned 16 degrees to the left-hand port side, instead.

While the Lamma IV could have done more to avoid a collision, including by being more attentive to radar readings, Mr. Pryke—whose analysis relied on radar tracking information and other evidence provided by Hong Kong authorities—said that the fault was mostly the Sea Smooth’s.

“Even at the very last moment she could have very easily avoided contact with a small alteration of course to starboard,” he said. The Sea Smooth, he said, “was primarily responsible for the collision,” and human error was “undoubtedly” responsible for the crash—error perhaps fueled by the fact that the captain had been alone in the wheelhouse.

© Melissa M. Chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: accidents, Hong Kong, transportation
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The translations are by Rogier Creemers of China Copyright and Media.

21 June 2006, 8:59, Fan Tao

If the comment article “Changes in the Final Structure of the Allocation of Our National Income, Tilted Towards Government” from the Shanghai Securities Daily appears on any website, please speedily delete it! Please acknowledge receipt!

22 June 2006, 9:00, Chen Hua

Search for, comb out and shield “Summary of the Xishan Meeting” and corresponding content; concerning the matter of a female student being killed in a collision on the campus of Guangdong Agricultural University, do not report or discuss it.

22 June 2006, 11:32, Chen Hua

I:

(1) Concerning “Removing Officials and Bringing Down the Cabinet,” “The Nasty Case of the Son-In-Law of Chen Shui-bian” and other matters on Taiwan, only report it, do not comment or guess on it, it is not permitted to use foreign media commentary.

(2) The development of the main reporting on the state of affairs, must be subject to quantity control of news reports in this regard, about 100 articles.

(3) Do not make netizens’ posts or blogged articles into official news for transmission, where forum, tracker or blog discussions become extreme, irrational or not beneficial to the grand scheme of achieving national unification, where discussions seize the opportunity to attack our policies towards Taiwan or attack our social system, or where there is unlawful or harmful information, this must be timely deleted.

(4) For reports concerning the situation on Taiwan, only reprint Xinhua copy, it is not permitted to edit and translate foreign media information.

(5) For major sudden incidents, propaganda discipline must be strictly obeyed, only transmit Xinhua copy, it is not permitted to gather or edit information by oneself, it is not permitted to publish comments without authorization, it is not permitted to edit and release foreign media information, articles or comments.

II: Some media reported that the “Pioneer” group president Liu Xiaoguang is under investigation of the Central Discipline Inspection Committee and that the Hong Kong traded company “Pioneer Enterprises” has been removed from the stock market in Hong Kong, on the basis of reports from the Beijing side, the above information does not conform to the facts, websites are not to reprint it without exception, existing information must be immediately removed, forums and blogs are also not to post this.

22 June 2006, 11:54, Wu Haihong

(On the basis of telephone content records, 1, 2 and 4 are titles, 3 is the corresponding event, there is no title.)

I: Female Student Dies on Some Guangdong University Campus After Being Hit by Military Vehicle

II: Power Outage at Some Sichuan University Incited Student Riot

III: Delete all reports concerning the student riot in Zhengzhou University (there is no title).

IV: Riots at Shanxi Zhongbei University Because of Dormitory Move.

22 June 2006, 12:48, Chen Hua

Urgent. Please rapidly screen out the matter of a large-scale student riot at Zhengzhou University Economy and Trade Faculty, rapidly screen out, search for and block this, do not report anything influences stability at Beijing higher education institutes, notify educational channels and blogs.

22 June 2006, 17:17, Fan Tao

Search for and delete non-Xinhua copy concerning the “incident of the Fujian Industry and Commerce Bureau Director Zhou Jinhui fleeing abroad” published on websites, strengthen supervision and control.

26 June 2006, 10:23, Fan Tao

Original notice text: All websites are to speedily delete “Female China International Economy and Trade Arbitration Commission Deputy Section Director Murdered.”

27 June 2006, 18:45, Network Management Office, Duty manager

(1) The special subject of the 85th anniversary of the Party’s founding is to be put in one line with running the web in a civilized manner and red memories, on a red background. When there are important remembrance activities and important speeches by central leaders, the World Cup special subject must make room at the large header position. Persist in preventing the playing up of negative news, and create a positive and upward online public opinion atmosphere for remembrance activities. Strengthen management over forums, blogs and news trackers, rumours, attacks, distortions and all other sorts of harmful information must be firmly and timely deleted.

(2) If there is information on “Chinese Navy Ship 774 Sinks after Collision” on forums, speedily delete it, and strengthen blocking.

(3) Concerning the matter of “CCTV Statement on Cancelling the Evening Broadcast of the National Anthem after Revision,” websites are no longer to reprint matters, report this or comment on this, existing news is to be pushed to the back stage, management over forums and blogs must be strengthened, timely delete attacks, abuses and other harmful information.

Please earnestly implement the above requirements!!

28 June 2006, 10:09, Network Management Office, Duty manager

Everyone, today in the afternoon, the Ministry of Information Industry and the State Council Information Office convened the teleconference on “Soundly Move Running the Web in a Civilized Manner and Using the Web in a Civilized Manner Activities Forward, Deeply Launch the ‘Sunlight and Green Network Project,’” all websites are requested to transmit the conference press releases published on People’s Daily Net and Xinhua Net on the main page of their website in the important news section, as well as the speech of director Cai Wu and Minister Wang Xudong, and leave them there for 24 hours. Put it in the section on running the web in a civilized manner, replace the special subject with the title.

28 June 2006, 10:56, Network Management Office, Duty manager

All websites, close all trackers without exception for articles concerning the 85th anniversary of the Party. It is reiterated again that when there are large remembrance activities and speeches by central leaders, they must be put on the header of the main page of websites on a read background, and the header of the news center, the World Cup must make way. This must be implemented.

28 June 2006, 14:56, Network Management Office, Duty manager

All websites are requested to continue to delete content related to Chen Qiuhua (airplane crash expert).

28 June 2006, 18:38

All websites are requested to reprint the report about the teleconference convened today in the afternoon by the Ministry of Information Industry and the State Council Information Office on the main page of websites and the important news section of news centers.

The article link is: http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2006-06/28/content_4762266.htm.

This article must be maintained on the main page for at least 24 hours.

28 June 2006, 18:40, Chen Hua

To report the gas explosion accident at the Wulong Colliery of the Liaoning Fuxin Mining Group, websites are only to use Xinhua copy and news conference copy from Liaoning province, do not set up news trackers; concerning the matter of deliberating the “Sudden Incident Response Law” (Draft), websites are only to use Xinhua copy or corresponding copy from the People’s Daily, must strengthen management over news trackers, forums and blogs, and timely delete attacks, abuses and other harmful information; for articles related to income allocation and other problems, only use copy from main central news work units, this may not be played up, also don’t do online surveys. Management over forums, trackers, blogs, etc. must be strengthened, timely block misrepresentations, attacks, extremes and other harmful discourse.

29 June 2006, 9:30, Fan Tao

The “Sudden Incident Response Law” (Draft) has been submitted to the 22nd Meeting of the 10th National People’s Congress Standing Committee for deliberation a few days ago. In order to guarantee that corresponding work proceeds smoothly, concerning the matter of deliberating the “Sudden Incident Response Law” (Draft), websites are only to use Xinhua copy and corresponding People’s Daily comments, must strengthen management over news trackers, forums and blogs, and timely delete attacks, misrepresentations and other harmful information.

29 June 2006, 17:17, Fan Tao

Recently, posts about a mass incident at the Qingdao Feiyang Professional and Technical College in Shandong emerged on a number of websites and forums, and some people seized the opportunity to stir up things. In order to maintain stability, websites are not to disseminate information related to the mass incident at the Qingdao Feiyang Professional and Technical College without exception, must strengthen management over forums and blogs, and timely delete relevant information.

 

2006年6月北京网管办发出的禁令（三）

2006年6月21日08时59分 范 涛

各网如发现有《上海证券报》的评论文章”我国国民收入分配最终格局的变化 正向政府倾斜”请迅速删除！收到请回复！

2006年6月22日09时00分 陈华

搜索、清查、屏蔽“西山会议纪要”及相关内容；关于广东农业大学校园内一女生被撞死一事，不报导、不讨论。

2006年6月22日11时32分 陈华

一：

1、对岛内“罢免和倒阁”及“陈水扁女婿涉弊案”等事件，只报道不评论、不猜测，不得引用境外媒体评论。

2、主要报道事态的发展，这方面新闻报道跟帖要控制数量，100条左右。

3、不得将网民帖文、博客文章作正式新闻稿转发，对论坛、跟贴、博客中过激的、非理性的、不利于祖国统一大业的言论，对借机攻击我对台方针政策、攻击我社会制度的言论，对违法有害信息要及时删除。

4、关于岛内局势的报道只转发新华社稿件，不得编译境外媒体消息。

5、重大突发事件，要严格遵守宣传纪律，只转新华社通稿，不得自采、自编消息，不得擅自发表评论，不得编发境外媒体消息、文章、评论。

二：

有媒体报道“首创”集团总经理刘晓光被中纪委调查以及香港上市公司“首创置业”在港停牌的消息，据北京方面告，上述消息均与事实不符，网站一律不转发，已有的要立即撤除，论坛、博客也不贴发。

2006年6月22日11时54分 吴海红

（根据电话内容记录，一，二，四为标题，三是相关事件，无标题）
请删除以下新闻：

一；广州某大学女生被军车在校园内撞死

二；四川某大学因停电引发学生骚乱

三：删除所有关于郑州大学学生骚乱的报道（没有标题）

四：山西中北大学因宿舍搬迁引发骚乱

2006年6月22日12时48分 陈华

急。请速清查郑州大学达经贸学院发生大规模学生骚乱一事 速各自清查 搜索屏蔽 影响北京高校稳定的不报道 通知教育频道 博客

2006年6月22日17时17分 范 涛

搜索并删除站内发布的关于“福建工商局长周金伙外逃事件”的非新华社稿，加强监控。

2006年6月26日10时23分范 涛

通知原文: 各网速删《中国国际经贸仲裁委员会女副处长遭劫杀》

2006年6月27日18时45分网管办值班

1、建党85周年的纪念专题与文明办网、红色记忆放在一行，套红摆放。有重要纪念活动和中央领导的重要讲话时，世界杯专题必须让出大头条位置。坚决 制止负面新闻炒作，为纪念活动营造积极向上的网上舆论氛围。加强对论坛、博客和新闻跟帖的管理，对造谣、攻击、歪曲等各类有害信息必须坚决、及时删除。

2、论坛中如有“中国海军774舰被撞沉”的消息，迅速删除，并加强封堵；

3、有关“央视就改版后取消晚间国歌播放声明”事，网站不再转载、报道、评论，已有新闻压至后台，要加强对论坛、博客跟帖的管理，及时删除攻击、谩骂等有害信息。

以上要求请认真执行！！

2006年6月28日10时09分 网管办值班

各位，今天下午信息产业部和国务院新闻办将联合召开”扎实推进文明办网 文明上网活动 深入开展’阳光·绿色网络工程’”电视电话会议，请各网站在首页要闻区突出转发好人民网、新华网登载的会议新闻稿，以及蔡武主任、王旭东部长在会上的讲 话，并保留24小时。放在文明办网位置上，以标题带专题。

2006年6月28日10时56分 网管办值班

各网：关于建党85周年的稿件，一律关闭跟帖。再次强调，有大的纪念活动和中央领导讲话时，必须套红放网站首页头条，新闻中心面头条，世界杯必须让路。务必执行。

2006年6月28日14时56分 网管办值班

各网请继续清除有关陈秋华（坠机事件中的专家）的内容

2006年6月28日18时38分

请各网在网站首页、新闻中心要闻区位置转发今天下午信息产业部、国新办联合召开的电视电话会议的报道。

文章链接为：http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2006-06/28/content_4762266.htm

此文章至少要在首页保留24小时。

2006年6月28日18时40分 陈华

有关辽宁阜新矿业集团五龙煤矿瓦斯爆炸事故的报道，网站只使用新华社通稿和辽宁省新闻发布会稿件，不设新闻跟帖；有关审议《突发事件应对法》（草 案）事，网站只使用新华社通稿和人民日报相关评论，要加强对新闻跟帖、论坛、博客的管理，及时删除攻击、歪曲等有害信息；收入分配等问题有关文章只使用中 央主要新闻单位稿件，不得炒作，也不搞网上调查。要加强对论坛、跟帖、博客等的管理，及时封堵删除歪曲、攻击、偏激等有害言论。

2006年6月29日09时30分 范 涛

《突发事件应对法》（草案）已于日前提交十届全国人大常委会第二十二次会议审议。为保证相关工作顺利进行，有关审议《突发事件应对法》（草案）事，网站只使用新华社通稿和人民日报相关评论，要加强对新闻跟帖、论坛、博客的管理，及时删除攻击、歪曲等有害信息。

2006年6月29日17时17分 范 涛

近日，一些网站论坛出现山东青岛飞洋职业技术学院群体性事件帖文，一些人借机煽动。为维护稳定，网站一律不传播有关青岛飞洋职业技术学院群体性事件的消息，要加强对论坛、博客的管理，及时删除有关信息。

These translated directives were first posted by Rogier Creemers on China Copyright and Media on November 28, 2012 (here).

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, Beijing Internet Instructions, Cai Wu, CCTV, censorship, Censorship Vault, Chen Hua, Chen Shui-bian, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, Guangdong, Hong Kong, Internet censorship, Jufian, Liaoning, Liu Xiaoguang, mining accidents, Ministry of Information Industry, Ministry of Truth, netizens, people's daily, propoganda, Qingdao, riots, Shandong, Shanghai, Shanxi, Sichuan, State Council Information Office, student protests, sudden incidents, Taiwan, World Cup, Wu Haihong, Xinhua, Zhengzhou
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By its peak in the 1990s, the 6.5 acre Kowloon Walled City was home to at least 33,000 people (with estimates of up to 50,000). That’s a population density of at least 3.2 million per square mile. For New York City to get that dense, every man, woman, and child living in Texas would have to move to Manhattan.

[…] Kowloon Walled City began as a military fort in Kowloon, a region in mainland China. In 1898, China signed a land lease with Great Britain, giving the British control of Hong Kong, Kowloon, and other nearby territories. But the lease stipulated that the fort in Kowloon would remain under Chinese jurisdiction.

Over time, the fort became abandoned, leaving the area subject to neither Chinese nor British authority. This legal gray zone was attractive to displaced and marginalized people. Thousands of people moved there after the war with Japan broke out in 1937. Even more people moved there after the Communist Revolution. It attracted gangsters, drug addicts, sex workers, and refugees. And it also drew a lot of normal people from all over China who saw opportunity there.

Click through to 99percentinvisible.org for photos and video of the Walled City. Host Roman Mars also tweeted a link to a Reddit ‘Ask Me Anything’ session with user Crypt0n1te, who claims to have lived there as a child.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: architecture, Britain, Hong Kong, podcasts, radio
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Wen Jiabao Family Wealth: See also reports from October 28 and 26.
- Wang Weidong (王卫东): One of the Wen family lawyers.
- Bai Tao (白涛): The other Wen family lawyer.
- 2.7b: Abbreviation for 2.7 billion, the estimated value of the Wen family personal assets.
- 27 + U.S. dollars (27+美元)
- Niu Shi (纽时): Abbreviation for the New York Times (纽约时报).
- Twisttimes (扭腰times): “Twist” (扭腰 niǔyāo, like the 1950s dance) sounds similar to New York (纽约 Niǔyuē).

Other:
- Moon Moon Bird (月月鸟): These are the components of the character 鹏 Péng, referring to former prime minister Li Peng, infamous for declaring martial law in Beijing during the Tiananmen protests. Li has recently donated RMB 3 million for student aid to Yanan University.
- Rita Fan (范徐丽泰): Former president of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong and a member of the Hong Kong delegation to the National People’s Congress.

Note: All Chinese-language words are tested using simplified characters. The same terms in traditional characters occasionally return different results.

CDT Chinese runs a project that crowd-sources filtered keywords on Sina Weibo search.  CDT independently tests the keywords before posting them, but some searches later become accessible again. We welcome readers to contribute to this project so that we can include the most up-to-date information. To add words, check out the form at the bottom of CDT Chinese’s latest sensitive words post.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bai Tao, Hong Kong, Li Peng, National People's Congress, new york times, Rita Fan, Sensitive Words Series, Wang Weidong, Wen Jiabao, yanan
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Ms. Cheng and her husband, Mr. Lui, 43, an employee at Hongkong Electric Co. for more than 10 years, took their two daughters on the passenger boat to view the Chinese national day fireworks, after winning a company lottery.

[…] People were orderly, they weren’t fighting for lifesavers. After taking two, I tried to go back inside the cabin, but I saw an old woman lying on the floor pleading for one of my rings.

I really felt like my life was at the crossroads. Do I give it to her? I didn’t even have time to think it through before I just gave her one. At this point, I was already touching the water.

Then I was quickly pulled deep under water. I think the fact that the other ferry drove away so quickly created some sort of whirlpool that pulled people under very fast. There was also a rope circling my neck, and I was afraid it would strangle me. All I could do at that point was pray. It took me a long time to swim back to the surface, where there was a lot of floating debris. I kept feeling like something was blocking me from getting my head back above the water. […]

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: accidents, Hong Kong, transportation
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