China Digital Times (CDT) » Tag: cartoons

Hexie Farm (蟹农场): Rule of Law

Sophie Beach — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:10:56 +0000

The latest cartoon in Hexie Farm‘s CDT series takes on the concept of the “rule of law” in China. In the official media, the Chinese government has insisted that the recent dismissal of former Politburo member and Chongqing Party secretary demonstrates the “resilience” of China’s rule of law.

Rule of Law, by Crazy Crab of Hexie Farm for CDT:

Read more about Hexie Farm’s CDT series, including a Q&A with the anonymous cartoonist, and see all cartoons so far in the series. Hexie Farm has been nominated for Deutsche Welle’s Best of the Blogs award in the Chinese category. Please show your support by voting for him!

[CDT owns the copyright for all cartoons in the Hexie Farm CDT series. Please do not reproduce without receiving prior permission from CDT.]

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cartoons, hexie farm, rule of law
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Hexie Farm (蟹农场) Series: The Politburo at War

Sophie Beach — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 23:31:49 +0000

Hexie Farm‘s latest entry in his CDT Series is a response to last week’s National People’s Congress meeting, which saw the dismissal of Chongqing Party Secretary and Politburo member Bo Xilai. The cartoon depicts the battle going on behind the scenes in the lead-up to the leadership transition at the 18th Party Congress later this year, when Bo was widely expected to be elevated to the Politburo Standing Committee.

The Politburo at War, by Crazy Crab for Hexie Farm:

The banner reads “Communist Party of China 18th National Congress”

Read more about Hexie Farm’s CDT series, including a Q&A with the anonymous cartoonist, and see all cartoons so far in the series.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, Bo Xilai, cartoons, hexie farm, npc 2012
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Cartoons: Article 73 in an Iron House

Sophie Beach — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 22:56:10 +0000

As the National People’s Congress prepares to vote on revisions to the Criminal Procedure Law, cartoonists in China are airing their feelings on the proposals. Most criticisms focus on Article 73, which enshrines the right of law enforcement to carry out secret detentions and disappearances of political suspects. For his latest contribution to his CDT series, Crazy Crab of Hexie Farm broached the subject with a sharp commentary on the law and CCP propaganda. Below are two more cartoons recently passed around on Chinese sites and microblogs:

(source: CDT Chinese)

Caption: 都在一个铁房子里，何必玩那么嗨呢。 “We are all living in the same iron house, why play this game to such a high level?” (Source: via CDT Chinese)

This caption refers to a statement by Lu Xun, China’s most famous writer, who once said:

“Imagine an iron house without windows, absolutely indestructible, with many people fast asleep inside who will soon die of suffocation. But you know since they will die in their sleep, they will not feel the pain of death. Now if you cry aloud to wake a few of the lighter sleepers, making those unfortunate few suffer the agony of irrevocable death, do you think you are doing them a good turn?”
“But if a few awake, you can’t say there is no hope of destroying the iron house.”

Article 73 is pictured as a bomb. “The game” refers to repression and secret detentions, which have been carried out to such an extent that lawmakers feel the need for a law such as Article 73.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cartoons, criminal procedure law, npc 2012, political satire
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Hexie Farm (蟹农场) Series: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall…

Sophie Beach — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:05:09 +0000

This week’s cartoon for Hexie Farm‘s CDT Series is a response to the proposed changes to the Criminal Procedure Law, which is slated for a vote this week by the National People’s Congress. The armband on the figure reads. “Criminal Procedure Law, Article 73.” This article has been the focus of criticism of the revisions. According to Human Rights Watch’s Nicholas Bequelin, writing in the New York Times: “Under the guise of regulating ‘residential surveillance,’ Article 73 of the revised law would effectively legalize secret detentions and ‘disappearances’ of people viewed as political risks by the government. This would legalize a pernicious practice that has recently been used against the artist Ai Weiwei, the lawyer Gao Zhisheng and the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. Up to now, such abductions have been technically illegal.”

Crazy Crab for Hexie Farm (蟹农场): Mirror, Mirror on the Wall:
Text (translated by CDT): “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the greatest, most glorious, and most correct of them all?” [The phrase "great, glorious and correct" has been used to describe the Communist Party for more than 40 years but has recently been reinterpreted by Chinese netizens.]

Read about Hexie Farm’s CDT series, including a Q&A with the anonymous cartoonist. See all cartoons in the series so far.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cartoons, criminal procedure law, hexie farm, npc 2012
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Introducing the Hexie Farm (蟹农场) CDT Series

Sophie Beach — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:42:29 +0000

Hexie Farm (蟹农场) is the name of a series of political cartoons created by an anonymous Chinese cartoonist who uses the pen name “疯蟹” or Crazy Crab. In recent months, his images have been widely and enthusiastically distributed through online channels both by Chinese netizens and fans around the world (despite the fact that “Hexie Farm” appears in a recent list of terms that have been banned on Sina Weibo search). The cartoons have quickly gained a large following for their unique blend of satire, wit, and razor-sharp commentary on current events in China (and elsewhere). All of his images can be viewed on his website.

“Hexie” literally means “river crab” but is also a homonym for “harmony,” a term employed by government propagandists to justify a crackdown on dissent. The cartoonist, who does not publicly reveal his real name, also launched the Dark Glasses: Portrait campaign to show support for activist Chen Guangcheng, who has been held under a particularly stringent form of house arrest in Shandong with his family.

Starting this month, Hexie Farm will be teaming up with China Digital Times to produce a series of cartoons, which will be published each week exclusively on CDT. CDT will translate the cartoons when necessary. To launch the series, we asked Crazy Crab a few questions about his life and work:

1. Can you give us some idea of your childhood and upbringing? What was your family like, what kind of work did your parents do, and what kind of area did you grow up in (rural, urban, etc)?

I grow up in a military family, both of my parents served in the army when I was small. Originally from north China, our family lived in southern China at that time. It was a poor area, my classmates were either countryside children or from army families. I enjoyed walking to school barefoot in summer, like a village kid. When I was in the secondary school, my family moved back to a small city in the north part of China.

2. Your work is clearly heavily influenced by George Orwell. When did you first read Orwell? What other writers or artists have had an important influence on you?

I cannot remember when I first read Animal Farm, probably after university. I like reading comic books. Some cartoonists, such as Charles Schultz, Bill Watterson, Gary Larson, Quino have a great influence on me.

3. When did you first begin drawing political cartoons?

I started to draw Hexie Farm since late 2009.

4. Who do you consider to be your primary audience? What has the reaction been to your drawings among your contemporaries/friends/colleagues in China?

Most readers of my cartoons are from China. My colleagues and old friends in fact do not know my drawings, except two of my best friends, but they all pretend that they do not know me on the Internet. I think they are protecting me as well as themselves. However, since I started to draw Hexie Farm, I feel that I have more and more friends day by day. People have forwarded and reposted my cartoons even knowing their accounts would be deleted for doing this. I enjoy exchanging my ideas with them on the Internet. They encourage me to draw and they also try to support me. When I say thanks to them, they reply “to not stop cartooning is the best thanks”. From a certain perspective, Hexie Farm is not only my own work, it survives until today because all of the support from these friends on the Internet, most of them I even do not know, and I have never met any of them.:)

Here is the first cartoon in Hexie Farm’s CDT series: To Kill the Spirit of Tibet. It was inspired by Francisco Goya’s “The Third of May 1808,” which commemorates the Spanish resistance to Napoleon’s armies.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cartoons, hexie farm, satire
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Eurozone Crisis, China and The Begging Bowl

Scott Greene — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 02:27:44 +0000

With Europe turning to China to bolster its bailout fund, the BBC News Magazine examines the shift in global power over the past century and assesses the impact of European dependence on Chinese capital going forward:

In October 1911, China rose up in revolution. Four months later the last emperor had fallen and European moneymen were flocking to Beijing, eager to finance the bankrupt new republic.
In October 2011, another European moneyman headed for Beijing. But Klaus Regling, head of the European Financial Stability Facility, did not go there to lend to China. He was there to borrow, asking China to save Europe from economic disaster.
In just one century, China has gone from financial basketcase to the world’s banker, and Europe has made the same trip in the other direction. It is one of the biggest turnarounds in history. How did it happen? And, more to the point, what does it mean?

Business Insider published a chart from Nomura over the weekend demonstrating why China should not bail out Europe, while a cartoon appeared in today’s Global Times depicting the political turmoil surrounding Greece’s bailout plans. Yesterday, Al Jazeera posted a video interview with Chinese economist Jin Liqun, who remains skeptical about a Chinese investment in Europe’s recovery.

See also CDT coverage of the EU rescue package and speculation that Europe may ease human rights pressure on China in exchange for a bailout.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cartoons, debt crisis, EU relations, Europe
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Cartoon: Qaddafi's Last Words

Xiao Qiang — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 05:39:13 +0000

The following Cartoon by Biantailajiao has gone viral in Chinese cyberspace since Qaddafi’s death last week.

301 Hospital refers to the General Hospital of Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the most prestigious hospital in Beijing, which specializes in treating high officials of the Communist Party.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cartoons, Libya, PLA
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Cartoon: Fang Binxing Confronts the 404 Problem (Updated)

Sophie Beach — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 06:08:35 +0000

The following cartoon is being distributed on Chinese social media networks. It depicts Fang Binxing, President of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications who is also known as the Father of the Great Firewall, sitting on the toilet. The caption reads: “President Fang Encounters the Mysterious 404 Problem.” In Internet HTTP protocol, a “404 error” indicates that the requested resource may be available again in the future, and is the error message Chinese netizens get when they try to access a website that has been blocked by the Great Firewall.

Update: Another related joke is also circulating among Chinese microbloggers. It goes like this:

Q: What if President Fang microblogged a “help” message on his cellphone from the toilet for his “404 problem”?
A: The Men’s Room would be locked tight within 20 minutes.

Read more about the Great Firewall and Fang Binxing via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cartoons, Fang Binxing, Great Firewall, satire
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Comic Strip: Birth of a Fifty Cent Party Member

Xiao Qiang — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 23:02:07 +0000

Netizens first coined the term “Fifty Cent Party” to refer to undercover Internet commentators who were paid by the government to sway public opinion (“fifty cents” is a reference to the alleged pay received per post). Now, however, the term is used to describe anyone who actively and publicly posts opinions online that defend or support government policy. As such, the so-called Fifty Cent Party has become the object of much scorn for many netizens. See, for example, this post by Han Han, and this satirical “training manual” for Fifty Cent Party members. Read more about the Fifty Cent Party via CDT. The following cartoons about the Fifty Cent Party have been widely distributed in Chinese cyberspace, translated by CDT.

Birth of a Fifty Cent Party [Member](...)
Read the rest of Comic Strip: Birth of a Fifty Cent Party Member (369 words)

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cartoons, fifty cent party, humor
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BlogTD: Cartoons About Recent News Events

Xiao Qiang — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 04:49:34 +0000

Guangzhou-based cartoonist Guaiguai is an extremely popular and prolific blogger. His work and name is all over Chinese cyberspace, as well as his brand name BlogTD. Here are some examples of his recent work:

Hillary Leading the People, a photo-shopped version of Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People.

Man: Darling, my cell phone service was cut off because I did not pay the bill, really not because I sent out those dirty jokes.” (As part of the recent anti-vulgarity campaign, China Mobile stopped clients’ service if they sent out porn jokes by text message.)

Watch out! He is backing out!

“Are you saying this slogan is vulgar?” (The slogan reads “Building a Socialist Country with Chinese Characteristics!” The circled characters, “characteristics” (te se) sounds like “very pornographic.”)

Helping people in Haiti. (Chinese official media’s reporting of earthquake aid for Haiti carries a nationalistic, self-promotional tune.)

Google walked away. (TMD is an abbreviation for Tamade (他妈的) or “Fuck it!”)

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-vulgarity campaign, bloggers, cartoons, Googlecn, satire
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