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Study: Beijing’s Air Worse Than At Past Olympics

From AP:

Beijing’s notoriously dirty air was cleaner during last summer’s Olympic games, but pollution levels were still much worse than at recent Olympics, despite a massive Chinese cleanup campaign, a new report said.

Athletes in Beijing faced pollution levels that were up to 3.5 times higher than those in recent Olympic cities like Athens, Atlanta and Sydney, said the study published Friday in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. The pollution often exceeded what the World Health Organization considers safe.

The joint American-Chinese study — the first major one published on air pollution during the Olympics — also found that the weather, and not the Chinese government’s strict controls imposed in the run-up to the games, played the largest role in clearing the air.
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- June 22, 2009 3:03 AM
Beijing To Hire Army Of Internet Censors

From Financial Times:

The city of Beijing is planning to hire thousands of internet censors in a fresh sign of the authorities’ attempts to tighten their grip on cyberspace.

The city will seek to employ at least 10,000 “internet volunteers” before the end of this year to monitor “harmful” websites and content, said an official at the municipal authority’s information office.

Chinese local governments and Communist party branches often pay web commentators to influence online opinion. But it is unusual for officials to admit the practice and the big recruitment drive gives a rare view of the resources China uses to try to control the internet.

Read also Beijing to recruit tens of thousands of “Internet supervision volunteers” from Xinhua.
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- June 21, 2009 12:31 AM
Beijing Claims Profit On Olympic Hosting

From AP:

Beijing Olympic organizers say they made a profit out of hosting last year’s Summer Games.

According to figures released Friday by the government audit bureau, $2.8 billion was spent on organizing and staging the Games, including the Paralympic Summer Games that followed.

That compares to income of $3 billion thus far, leaving a profit of $176 million, the bureau said. The biggest chunk, accounting for 40 percent, came from broadcast and marketing rights, along with sales of tickets, souvenirs, and commemorative coins and stamps.
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- June 20, 2009 2:59 AM
Twittering Bad Air Particles in Beijing

From Time:

Anyone stepping outside in Beijing around midday on June 18 would have noticed something slightly amiss. The sky was dark enough for cars to use their headlights, and the air was as thick as a smoky bar just before last call. After one of the cleanest springs on record, the Chinese capital’s air quality took an unhealthy plunge for the worse.

You wouldn’t have known it by the official numbers. The Ministry of Environmental Protection publishes air quality data online each day at noon, but only for the previous 24-hour-period. Anyone who checked on the afternoon of June 18 would have seen an air pollution figure that indicated Beijing’s skies were “slightly polluted,” referring to the 24 hours before. (See pictures of Beijing’s attempt to clean up its air.)

But a glimpse from another monitoring station that gives hourly updates shows a very different picture. The U.S. Embassy operates a single station in eastern Beijing that records levels of PM2.5, fine particles considered particularly dangerous to human health. At noon that same day, the hourly measure of PM2.5 crept up into the “hazardous” range, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards, and hit a maximum value of 500 for several hours.
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- June 20, 2009 2:34 AM
Headlights at Noon, Yet Officials Give All-Clear on Beijing Smog

Jonathan Watts posts to the Environment Blog at the Guardian:

The need for a new air pollution index in Beijing was gloomily apparent today as visibility plunged, yet official statistics indicated the Chinese capital was just short of enjoying a “blue sky” day.

[...]The independent monitoring station BeijingAir reported a peak in the air-pollution index over 500, the worst limit on the scale and far past the point where children, the elderly and people with lung diseases should avoid outdoor physical activity.

[...]Yet, the official data showed a benign 104, deemed lightly polluted and only four over the point at which Beijing would notch up another “blue-sky” day.
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- June 18, 2009 1:07 PM
Beijing Ready For Lethal Injections

From China Daily:

By the end of the year all criminals sentenced to death in Beijing will receive a lethal injection instead of being executed by gunshot.

A lethal injection site has been built next to the city’s No 1 detention house, which houses the majority of the city’s condemned, in Dougezhuang town, about 20 km northwest of downtown Beijing, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.

The Beijing Municipal High People’s Court has already made preparations for the change, including allocation of staff and boosting technical capacity.
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- June 16, 2009 12:07 AM
Anonymous Memoirist Recounts a Life of Excess in Modern China

Bloomberg reviews a memoir by an anonymous writer, ZZ, which portrays the fast life in Beijing:

Written before the global credit meltdown, “China High: My Fast Times in the 010: A Beijing Memoir” lifts a curtain on a side of Beijing seldom seen by tourists. ZZ captures the nocturnal buzz of a city where rave parties in derelict factories are a staple and orgies have become a rite of passage. Then there’s the pot, which locals call the Big Numb.

Beneath the froth lies a serious message: The world’s largest developing economy is seething in social tension, displaced people and hypocrisy. It’s a land of official sexual equality run by men who often keep under-30 mistresses, aka their “little honeys,” on two-year contracts. A country given to bouts of xenophobia among people who fawn on foreigners.

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- May 24, 2009 3:17 PM
Taboo Removal: In China, Tattoos Make a Comeback

McClatchy looks at the growing trend of tattooing in Beijing, where the hottest tattoos are written in English, much as Chinese characters (often badly mangled) are all the rage in the U.S.:

Tattoos have been around for nearly a millennium in China. Perhaps the most famous one graced the back of Yue Fei, a famous general in the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279 A.D.) whose back read: “Serve the country loyally.” Legend has it that his mother ordered the tattoo as inspiration. Under recent decades of Communist Party rule, however tattoos have been largely taboo. Soldiers and police officers must be ink-free. Sports stars rarely have them. And employers discriminate against those with tattoos, thinking they signal a criminal bent.

Only in the past few years have scores of tattoo parlors opened in China’s capital, often in back alleys and in private apartments. The industry is unregulated but flourishing, operating in a gray area that occupies a significant slice of Chinese life, neither legal nor illegal.

“I’m busy every day of the week from morning to night,” said Liu Yubo, who operates the Wumo People tattoo parlor. “People have to make an appointment a month in advance.”

On his blog, reporter Tim Johnson has a brief profile of tattoo artist Zhou Xiaodong.
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- April 7, 2009 9:43 PM
Province Supplying Beijing Water Drying Up: State

From AFP, via Yahoo News:

A province in north China that supplies Beijing with much needed water is itself facing serious shortages of the resource, state media reported ahead of World Water Day on Sunday.

Li Qinglin, director of Hebei’s water conservation department, said water shortages had become a big problem for the province’s social and economic development, the official Xinhua news agency reported late Saturday.

“Water resources in Hebei have dwindled by nearly 50 percent in recent years,” Li was quoted as saying.

Hebei, part of China’s parched north, is one of the major suppliers of water to neighbouring Beijing and Tianjin — two sprawling cities that together group at least 28 million people and are running out of the resource.

China’s rapid economic expansion has helped deplete its water supplies and has long been one of the country’s major concerns.
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- March 22, 2009 10:27 PM
Three Set Themselves on Fire in Beijing, With Photos (Updated)

From the Guardian:

Three men set themselves on fire in the heart of the capital, Beijing, today, official media reported.

The men ignited a fire inside their car at 3pm on the busy junction of Wangfujing, a popular shopping street, and Chang’an Avenue, the city’s main thoroughfare, which leads to Tiananmen Square.

The men’s condition is not known, the state news agency Xinhua reported, quoting a Beijing government spokesman.

[Photo source: news.sina.com]

Update: Xinhua reports on the current status of the three people.

It said two of the three people, who were inside the car, were hospitalized for non-life-threatening injuries.

Xinhua has confirmed with two separate sources that there were two men and one woman in the vehicle at the time of the incident. One woman and one man were taken to the hospital.

The information office statement mentioned nothing about the third person.

An eyewitness who refused to be named told Xinhua two people in the car were taken away by an ambulance and the other one by police.

An unnamed source to Reuters news agency has said one of of three might have been a Uighur. Maureen Fan from the Washington Post reports on the fire:

A preliminary investigation of the high-profile protest showed the men had come to the capital to file grievances with the central government, police said, in a common tactic that local governments often try to squash. Unnamed sources told the Reuters news agency that at least one of the men might have come from the restive Uighur minority in China’s northwestern Xinjiang province. Xinjiang public security officials would not confirm the report, which comes as authorities step up security ahead of several sensitive political anniversaries this year.

At 2:50 p.m., a car with out of town plates pulled up to the southern end of the Wangfujing pedestrian street, a popular tourist spot, Beijing police said in a faxed statement. When police approached the suspicious-looking car, the interior suddenly burst into flames. Police put out the fire and sent two of the men to the hospital, where their injuries were said to not be life-threatening. A third man was taken away by ambulance, the New China News Agency said without elaborating.

Self-immolations in China have been used as political statements or last-resort protests by individuals upset that the government has not solved their complaints. In 2001, five people the government said were members of the banned Falun Gong sect set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square, the scene of a deadly crackdown on student protests 20 years ago this June. Falun Gong denies that people who set themselves on fire are true followers. Three years ago, a man protesting not being paid set himself on fire in the same square, which is about half a mile from Wednesday’s incident.

A Reuters report provides more details of the event:

A witness saw “some kind of incendiary device” explode when police wrenched open the door of a small silvery-grey car, with what looked like three Chinese flags attached to its roof.

The Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau said in a faxed statement that the passengers were in a car with non-Beijing plates and were stopped by police who thought the car looked odd. It did not describe the incident as self-immolation.

“When they were advancing to examine it, the inside of the car caught fire and it was swiftly extinguished,” said the statement. Two of the passengers were injured and sent to hospital, where they were not in critical danger.

“Based on initial inquiries, the three came to Beijing to voice personal grievances,” said the police statement.
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- February 25, 2009 8:00 AM
Helping Commercial Companies Destroy Their Competitors: Beijing’s Top Internet Cop Arrested (Updated)

Mingpao is reporting news of the arrest of the head of the Internet monitoring department of the Beijing Public Security Bureau on suspicion of accepting bribes. The original Chinese report is here; Excerpts translated by CDT:

Helping Commercial Companies Destroy Their Competitors: The Director of Beijing’s Internet Monitoring Department Took 40 Million RMB in Bribes

Yu Bing (于兵), the director of the Internet monitoring department of the Beijing public security bureau, has been arrested by the Beijing procuratorate and is under investigation for taking more then 40 million RMB in bribes from the Rising (瑞星) anti-virus software company and partnering with other Internet police to frame a competitor of Rising (瑞星), Micropoint Company, resulting in the failure of the latter’s new products to reach the market. Three criminal suspects, including Yu Bing, have been arrested.

Mingpao’s article is based on China’s Science and Technology Daily 《科技日报》report earlier this month.

助商人除对手：北京公安网监处长受贿4千万

明报专讯/中国揭发“电脑杀毒软件业界最大丑闻”。北京公安局网监处处长于兵涉嫌收受杀毒软件公司瑞星公司4000多万元贿赂，伙同网监警官联手陷害瑞星竞争对手东方微点公司，导致微点的新产品不能上市。3人因徇私枉法、收受贿赂，已被北京检察院逮捕.

Read also: Rising VP Arrested for Bribes, Framing Competitor.

Update 1: Rising Denies Allegations It Framed Competitor.

Update 2: Chinese internet surveillance tsar arrested for graft on the Irish Times:

China’s top surveillance tsar has been has been arrested for taking bribes and framing a business rival, a move that has inspired and gratified both local bloggers and foreign journalists used to stultifying censorship regulations, and prompted questions at senior levels of the Communist Party about how the “Great Firewall of China” is enforced.

Yu Bing, director of the internet monitoring department of Beijing’s Public Security Bureau (PSB), has been arrested on suspicion of taking more than 40 million yuan (€4.5 million) in bribes.

Everyone in Beijing is accustomed to living with surveillance of their online activities: internet cafe habitues, student bloggers, teenage gamers and foreign journalists are all used to that familiar message saying your internet search has fallen foul of security.

Update 4: China’s surveillance cop arrested:

Beijing’s top surveillance czar has been arrested on suspicion of taking bribes and framing a businessman, a move that comes as a serious blow to the net nannies who police the “Great Firewall of China.”

Yu Bing, director of the internet monitoring department of Beijing’s Public Security Bureau (PSB), has been arrested on suspicion of taking more than 40 million yuan ($5.8 million) in bribes.

China has tens of thousands of “net nannies,” who read every email, web posting or search for terms such as “Dalai Lama” or “Falun Gong.”

… Everyone in Beijing is accustomed to living with surveillance of their online activities: internet cafe habitues, student bloggers, teenage gamers and foreign journalists are all used to that familiar message saying your internet search has fallen foul of security.

Update 5: Beijing’s Top Internet Spy Arrested on the Wired blog.
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- February 20, 2009 9:18 AM
China Detains Building Chief in TV Complex Blaze

The axe has begun to fall for Monday’s fire at the CCTV headquarters. From the New York Times:

The police detained 12 people, including the chief of construction for the new headquarters of China Central Television, or CCTV, and eight employees of the firm the broadcaster hired to put on an illegal fireworks show that the authorities said ignited the blaze.

The fire gutted a nearly completed 520-foot futuristic skyscraper that was part of CCTV’s new $1.1 billion headquarters, sometimes described as an architectural symbol of China’s rising power. One firefighter died and seven other people were injured.

Many questions remain about the fire, including how fireworks could have ignited such an inferno and why the flames seemed to spread unchecked through a modern tower, designed by a world renowned architect, that would presumably be outfitted with state-of-the-art fire retardant systems.

See also “CCTV official detained over massive fire” and, earlier, “CCTV site manager questioned about fire” from Xinhua. An audio report of the latter Xinhua article, via China Daily, is here.

To see how Chinese bloggers are reacting to news of the fire, see here, here, and here, via CDT.
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- February 12, 2009 1:39 PM
Firefighters Battle Koolhass Fire

Firefighters spray the CCTV complex blaze from a giant ladder.
By hunxue-er.
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- February 9, 2009 1:26 PM
Uighur Petitioner Turned Away in Beijing (with Video)

Hakim Siyit, a Uighur farmer from Kashgar prefecture in China’s far western Xinjiang Autonomous Region, has been petitioning the Chinese government to compensate Kashgar farmers for heavy losses over compulsory production of long beans. After appealing to various lower levels of government, Siyit traveled to Beijing to file his complaint, where he was briefly detained and then sent home. Radio Free Asia has details:

Hakim Siyit, a farmer from Yengisar county, in Xinjiang’s western Kashgar prefecture, blamed the secretary of the communist party’s county branch for the plan’s failure, which called for all farmers in the county to grow the same crop and did not anticipate oversupply.

According to China’s law on the Popularization of Agricultural Technology, any entity causing loss to farmers through the forced adoption of technology is required to repay total damages.

[...]“There are few places left that I haven’t been to for this. I went to the Xinjiang regional government in Urumqi five times. I went to Beijing once. To Kashgar, I made 13 or 14 trips in total,” Siyit said.

Hakim Siyit (Photo: RFA)

The full article includes a film shot by Siyit in his petition efforts, recording Kashgar farmers’ reactions to news that they would be forced to follow the long bean crop plan for a second time.
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- February 1, 2009 4:44 PM
China Says Bird Flu Patient Dies (Updated)

A woman has died in Beijing in what could potentially be the first death from the bird flu in almost a year. From Reuters:

The woman died on Monday. Her age was not known, Xinhua news agency said. There were no other details.

“The report is true, but there are no details so far,” said Zhang Jianshu, a spokesman with the publicity office of the Beijing Health Bureau, told Reuters by telephone.

The World Health Organisation’s China office was not immediately able to provide comment.

Update: Health authorities are now confirming that the woman dies of bird flu. See a report from Reuters.
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- January 6, 2009 10:47 AM