With the Internet so difficult to control, the U.S. and China must boost coordination to shore up cybersecurity, Fang Fenghui, chairman of the People’s Liberation Army General Staff, said with Martin Dempsey yesterday. The U.S. is committed to a “better, deeper, more enduring relationship” with China, Dempsey said.

Ties between the U.S. and China have been strained by allegations by U.S. security company Mandiant Corp. that China’s army may be behind cyberattacks on companies worldwide. Dempsey is on a visit to China to seek closer dialogue with China’s military, discuss North Korea’s nuclear program and ease Chinese concerns over the Obama administration’s strategic pivot to the Asia-Pacific.

“If Internet security cannot be controlled, it’s not an exaggeration to say the effects could be no less than a nuclear bomb,” Fang said at the briefing with Dempsey.“The Internet is open to everyone and attacks can be launched from anywhere.”

The meeting marked the highest-level military talks between China and the U.S. in two years, reports Jane Perlez of The New York Times, and comes as The White House has made more direct statements about cyber security in recent weeks. The U.S. has demanded that China crack down on hacking and start negotiating rules for proper behavior in cyberspace, and new secretary of state John Kerry’s brought up cyber security during his recent visit to China. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the Obama administration is weighing several options, including trade sanctions and even the indictment of Chinese nationals in U.S. courts, to more aggressively confront China over the issue. But China has denied the allegations by Mandiant and accused America of perpetrating cyber attacks as well.

Last week, Foreign Policy’s Jason Healey wrote that “there is a nugget of truth” in China’s claims that it has been the subject of U.S.-based hacking:

The Chinese press has reported that the websites of 85 public institutions and companies were “hacked” between September 2012 and March 2013, with 39 of those attacks traced back to the United States. During a similar period, Chinese authorities noted that there had been some 5,800 hacking attempts from U.S. IP addresses and that U.S.-based servers had hosted 73 percent of the phishing attacks against Chinese customers. Of the 6,747 computers controlling nearly 2 million botnets in China — the ones the Chinese spokesman told FT about — 2,194 were in the United States, “making it the largest point of origin of cyber attacks against China,” according to Xinhua.

Perhaps oddly for Chinese statistics, these actually stand up to scrutiny: American cyberspace is one of the least secure online realms. The United States does indeed top the list of botnet controllers with 40 percent of the total tracked by cybersecurity giant McAfee; Russia accounted for 8 percent and China 3 percent. Other measurements show these nations grouped closer together, but the United States is clearly a leading source of attacks. For example, Akamai, one of the world’s largest content-delivery networks, has observed that 13 percent of global attack traffic originated from the United States, though 33 percent came from China. Russia has the most malicious severs, with the United States ranking sixth; China doesn’t make the top 10, according to HostExploit’s latest quarterly report. After years of stories about U.S. military and intelligence cyber-capabilities, international audiences might see these statistics and agree with China that it is the Americans who are the troublemakers — after all, they were the ones behind Stuxnet.

…

Yet U.S. cyber-operations are extremely different from their Chinese equivalents and cannot be compared in the way the Chinese suggest. When the U.S. military or intelligence community conducts cyber-operations, they are quiet, coordinated, exceptionally well targeted, and under the strict control of senior officers and government executives. Lawyers review every stage. Even Stuxnet, though it was a breathtakingly sophisticated and brazen attack, was so tightly controlled that, when it escaped its target network, it caused no disruption. The White House keeps a close hold on cyber-operations through senior executives, generals, and political appointees throughout the bureaucracy.

Chinese espionage, by comparison, is under no such control. As in other areas of Chinese society, the People’s Liberation Army and state-owned enterprises are subject to little oversight and feel little need to coordinate their actions. Recently, one colleague that works for a specialized incident-response firm reported finding as many as seven different Chinese espionage groups operating in the same network, all sending information back to different masters. Few, if any, senior party officials care to rein in activities helping domestic companies (and probably lining their own pockets) by stealing foreign intellectual property.

The Diplomat’s Trefor Moss worries that “cyberspace may become the venue for a new Cold War for the Internet generation” as China, the United States and others continue to test the undefined boundaries of the Internet:

Cyberspace matters. We know this because governments and militaries around the world are scrambling to control the digital space even as they slash defense spending in other areas, rapidly building up cyber forces with which to defend their own virtual territories and attack those of their rivals.

But we do not yet know how much cyberspace matters, at least in security terms. Is it merely warfare’s new periphery, the theatre for a 21^st century Cold War that will be waged unseen, and with practically no real-world consequences? Or is it emerging as the most important battle-space of the information age, the critical domain in which future wars will be won and lost?

For the time being, some states appear quite content to err on the side of boldness when it comes to cyber. This brazen approach to cyber operations – repeated attacks followed by often flimsy denials – almost suggests a view of cyberspace as a parallel universe in which actions do not carry real-world consequences. This would be a risky assumption. The victims of cyber attacks are becoming increasingly sensitive about what they perceive as acts of aggression, and are growing more inclined to retaliate, either legally, virtually, or perhaps even kinetically.

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Post tags: Barack Obama, Cold War, cyberattacks, cyberespionage, cybersecurity, john kerry, Mandiant, netizens, sanctions, U.S. relations
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The Tianzi Road Project is an important source of political capital for local Party leaders in Xinjiang and there has been pressure in recent months to complete phase two. On April 16, just two days before the on-site accident, local media reported that work on the project had been accelerated.

One source in Xinjiang, who requested anonymity given the local sensitivity of this story, said many problems had been exposed at the Tianzi Road Project and that the local government had violated normal construction procedures for the sake of “political point scoring” (政府为了政绩违背建设规律一味最求速度). The source also alleged that the Urumqi Evening Post had sent two inexperienced interns to the Tianzi Road Project worksite because it believed they would be more amenable to the propaganda goals of the local leadership.

According to the Xinjiang source, the accident on April 18 happened on a section of the project directly across from Urumqi’s famous bazaar, the “Dabazha.” The source also told CMP that the reporting intern killed in the accident, Bailu (拜璐), belongs to China’s muslim Hui minority.

The priority nature of the infrastructure project and the ethnicity of the intern who was killed both make this a potentially sensitive story for the local leadership.

Bandurski further reports that Sina Weibo users noticed when the Urumqi Evening Post deleted one post on the story and removed specific details from another. with some netizens speculating that local officials wanted to distance themselves and the project from the tragedy.

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Post tags: construction project, infrastructure projects, netizens, online public opinion, sina weibo, Urumqi, Xinjiang
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China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the regulatory body that governs the Internet and telecommunications sectors, is looking at the possibility of users having to pay a small fee to the telcos to use the app, said Miao Wei, head of the ministry, according to Caixin Media.

Experts say charging a fee could affect its popularity.

Tencent, China’s largest online gaming and social networking company, said recently it plans to invest heavily in Weixin to attract more overseas users.

Weixin (known as WeChat in English) has emerged as a serious challenger to microblogging site Sina Weibo for social media supremacy in China, and Tea Leaf Nation’s Rachel Lu and David Wertime wrote Sunday that its rapid growth may also be affecting the fees that China’s three state-owned mobile providers earn on text messages:

The latest statement from the MIIT has gone viral on Sina Weibo, with over 18,000 users sharing the post and over 6,000 weighing in to comment. User @dhljl echoed a widely held sentiment that “the day Weixin charges a fee is the day it is destroyed.” Weibo commenters apparently comprised many Weixin users as well, as they rushed to defend the service with argument, epithet, or humor.

…

The smart money says that Chinese authorities, and the SOEs with whom they remain closely tied, will not follow through with their threat. At best, it would represent a short-term revenue boost to telecom providers, but at the expense of one of China’s most promising and innovative new products. Even that much cannot be guaranteed. The fee may simply drive erstwhile Weixin users into the arms of the inevitable next-generation Weixin copy-cats, who would gladly continue to siphon revenue from the Big Three.

At worst, the move would enrage users and simply shift wealth from everyday Chinese users and an innovative private company to three SOEs. The appearance of an unholy alliance between government and SOEs prompted one Reuters columnist to call the latter a “vampire squid” late last year, and that perception has only intensified with recent negative state media coverage of Apple, Inc. that appears protectionist in nature.

Without knowing Chinese authorities’ true intent, it’s at least likely that they have used recent statements as trial balloons, gauging reaction on Weibo and other social media platforms in order to determine the extent of possible blowback. It would not be the first time that the Chinese Internet, with its relatively free-wheeling commentary, were used as a window into public sentiment by officials who lack more democratic means of pulse-taking.

Forbes contributor Doug Young claims that the three Chinese telcos have “found a potent ally” in the MIIT:

Firstly, I want to give my strong view that the MIIT has no place in helping to resolve this dispute, and that similar mediation by a government regulator would never happen in a developed market like the US or Western Europe. Participation by the MIIT is even more problematic because the agency has a clear bias towards China’s 3 telcos, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom[/entity]. Anyone who follows the industry will know that officials move freely back and forth between these 3 telcos and the regulator, meaning the MIIT can hardly be a fair middle man in this case. By comparison, Tencent is an entrepreneurial company that probably has few if any former MIIT officials in its ranks.

Miao’s new comments indicate that his agency is siding with the telcos and pressuring Tencent to start charging fees for WeChat, better known by its Chinese name Weixin. Tencent had previously indicated it would let the service remain free and try to monetize the platform by offering value-added services like online games and mobile shopping. If it succumbs to the MIIT’s pressure, look for WeChat’s rapid growth to stall as users defect to other free services. The case could should be an important one to watch, as it could well become a template for the kinds of relationships we’ll see between the Chinese telcos and popular app developers in the future.

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Post tags: microblogging, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, netizens, online public opinion, social media, telecommunications, tencent, text messaging, Weixin
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“The Shoe Fits” (Kuang Biao)

This past weekend, Xi Jinping told an audience at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations that “only the wearer knows if the shoe fits his foot.” Netizens have taken Xi to task on his characterization of China’s “personalized” development strategy, wondering when the country’s “worn-out shoes” will be replaced.

Blogger and commentator Wuyue Sanren caught the metaphor and ran with it on Weibo:

@五岳散人: My take on the shoe-and-foot question: Whoever buys the shoes has the last word. The common people pay taxes, so they have the right to say whether or not the shoe fits, as well as the style they want. A well-chosen pair of shoes also comes with a warranty and the privilege to exchange or return the items. The shoes themselves don’t have the qualifications to say whether they fit or not. Shoes that do aren’t shoes, they’re shackles.

@五岳散人：关于鞋与脚的问题我是这么想的：谁花钱买鞋谁说了算，老百姓纳税了，有权表达鞋是不是合脚，以及鞋子的款式。选好了鞋子还要有三包服务，也要有退换货的权利。鞋子本身没有说自己是不是合脚的资格，有这个资格的不是鞋子，往往都是脚镣。

This comment has already been deleted.

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Post tags: netizens, political humor, political reform, weibo, Wuyue Sanren, Xi Jinping
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Xi Jinping’s Moscow lecture rankled many netizens. (Xinhua)

The following article originally appeared March 23 on the BBC Chinese website.

While discussing the paths that nations take towards development in a speech delivered at Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Chinese president and CCP General-Secretary Xi Jinping said, “Only the wearer knows if the shoe fits his foot.” President Xi’s comments led Chinese microbloggers to comment at length.

On Tencent Weibo, user @叶海波 says, “If a country’s people lack freedom of speech, is speaking of shoes fitting their feet not a bit extravagant?”

Sina Weibo user @郑现莉 posts, “Of course, only the feet will know if the shoe is appropriate. Therefore, not only the subset of feet whose shoes fit should be heard while other voices are stifled, but all feet should be allowed to stand publicly and testify freely. Only this way will those with well-fitting shoes get accurate information to advance reform for all shoe-wearers. Otherwise, while the sound of praise is ringing, many feet will still suffer.”

A netizen going by @云卷云舒随风意 replies, “Yes, indeed. So, when I’m at a store shopping for shoes, I’ll first try them on. If they don’t fit, I’ll immediately abandon them, no matter what brand they are. If you want to stick to a certain brand, finding the correct size becomes a bit more difficult, does it not?

Netizen @我卖糕的2012 says, “If the shoe on one man’s foot doesn’t fit and he wants to exchange them, they’ll say he is not qualified to represent the people who feel the shoes fit well. He’ll say, if that’s the people’s decision, we must take account of their feelings. With that sentence, he will be judged.”

 

“If the shoe doesn’t fit, what’s to be done?”

Netizen @施济 thinks, “If the shoe doesn’t fit but is worn continually, this leads to the most suffering.”

User @梧桐老廖 quips, “You let your family wear comfortable shoes, while compelling ours to wear worn-out shoes of the wrong size.”

@天黑不白 raises a question, “But how will they know if this country’s people feel the shoe fits or not?”

@林朝海 asks “If the shoe doesn’t fit what is to be done? Give me a new pair, or cut my foot down to size?”

User @窈窕老淑女 wonders, “You want try a new pair of shoes to see if they fit? Anyway, everyone’s current shoes are chafing their feet.”

Via CDT Chinese. Translation by Josh Rudolph.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: netizens, political reform, weibo, Xi Jinping
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The public mood seemed to be favourable for CCTV until around 8:26pm, when Taiwanese actor Peter Ho, posted the following message on his Weibo: “Apple plays so many tricks with their customer service? I feel hurt as an Apple fan. Have you done right by [Steve] Jobs? Have you done right by boys who sell their kidneys [to buy iphones], he asked, adding: “this is an example of big-name shops bullying customers.”

Ho’s message ended with a short line which soon became notorious: “To publish around 8.20pm.”

But it was nothing to be missed by sharp-eyed netizens and eager fans.

Minutes later, criticism, speculation and theories were posted on Weibo about Ho’s 8.20pm statement.

Within two hours, Ho claimed in a new post that somebody had commandeered his Weibo account and posted the controversial message. But the post had gone viral before authorities censored it, according to the Atlantic’s Liz Carter, and the incident was picked up by every major Chinese news organization. Netizens ridiculed both Ho and CCTV, and one well-known author who had denied on his Weibo that he had accepted money to post supportive comments. Kaifu Lee, the Google executive and well-known blogger who had not joined the fray, admitted that CCTV had invited him to post comments.

The chatter continued into Monday, according to David Bandurski at the China Media Project, who posted a screenshot of Peter Ho’s Weibo account. Bandurski also partially translated a blog post from Chinese writer Li Chengpeng which chided CCTV for its behavior:

It’s not that you can’t do some things on and off the air to go along with the fight against fakes. But you cannot use public power to make targeted strikes against those who aren’t your major advertisers. Of course you can criticise Apple, but you cannot let all of these domestically manufactured fraudulent goods off the hook when you could so easily investigate them, then turn a harsh and uncompromising eye on a mobile brand that leads the world in overall quality — even making it out to be something of great concern to the people, a form of national discrimination . . . The thing is, you’ve always done things this way. You act all the time like you don’t give a damn about your own face, and then you place the condom of state power over the instrument of your own private profit.

Those enterprises are bad, but what you’re doing is disgusting. A massive network like yours, with massive channel resources in your grasp and high-level contacts, but your creativity is such that you can only be compared to [propaganda] megaphone shouting over the countryside . . . .

You turn your eyes from knife attacks on our own children, but focus your attention on tragedies at schools overseas; you don’t criticize the way our own congresses have gathered like so many artificial limbs for 60-odd years, but always mock the way shoes have been thrown again in a parliament in some other country. You’ve never questioned why officials in our country don’t open up about their assets (great, so on this issue we must thank foreign reporters for asking this question at press conferences), but you take great joy in reporting about some government official overseas who got caught using public funds to buy a bottle of wine. Yes, there are certainly many untoward things happening outside China — poisonous foods, corrupt officials, poverty. But no matter how many of these dirty stories there are overseas, what the hell do these have to do with me? I don’t have family there. I criticize ugly things in China because these do harm to my own family (Oh, I see, so perhaps you criticize things overseas so much because you own relatives have already . . . ?). You are China’s national television network, so you should be criticizing more things happening right beside you. That’s how you contribute to your own country. Is it so hard for you to understand this simple concept?

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, CCTV, chinternet, Kaifu Lee, microblogs, netizens, online public opinion, Peter Ho, propaganda, sina weibo
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The White House, Mr. Donilon said, is seeking three things from Beijing: public recognition of the urgency of the problem; a commitment to crack down on hackers in China; and an agreement to take part in a dialogue to establish global standards.

“Increasingly, U.S. businesses are speaking out about their serious concerns about sophisticated, targeted theft of confidential business information and proprietary technologies through cyberintrusions emanating from China on an unprecedented scale,” Mr. Donilon said in a wide-ranging address to the Asia Society in New York.

“The international community,” he added, “cannot tolerate such activity from any country.”

Cyber security analysts in the U.S. claimed in 2011 that they sourced a bulk of China-based cyber attacks against America to about a dozen groups backed or directed by the Chinese government, and a report last month by security firm Mandiant identified a unit of the People’s Liberation Army that had allegedly stolen large quantities of sensitive data from U.S. companies and government organizations since 2006. And while Chinese netizens have called out evidence from the web to support Mandiant’s claims, the Chinese government has responded by accusing America of perpetrating cyber attacks against China as well.

The issue could become more sensitive for the Obama administration, according to Geoff Dyer and Shannon Bond at the Financial Times, as it wants to prove it can act tough against China but doesn’t want cyber security to dominate Sino-U.S. relations. The Wall Street Journal had more on Donilon’s comments:

White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said Mr. Donilon raised the cybersecurity issue in his remarks to highlight the priority it has taken in talks with the Chinese government. He sought to provide “a constructive way forward,” Ms. Hayden said, adding, “given the increased media attention, our growing concerns, and the fact that cyber has become a priority topic in our discussions with the Chinese, it made sense to include it in a speech that is intended to highlight our priorities.”

The White House criticism of China Monday followed a highly orchestrated administration rollout recently of a cybersecurity campaign, which included an executive order to bolster the protections for computer networks running critical infrastructure like the electric grid.

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Post tags: Barack Obama, cyberattacks, cyberespionage, cybersecurity, Mandiant, netizens, Tom Donilon, U.S. relations, Yang Jiechi
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Because PM 2.5 uses the Latin alphabet, the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies is conducting research and gauging opinions from all walks of life to name the term properly, it said.

People nationwide are contributing creative terms, including ‘Beijing grey’, ‘toxic dust’, ‘air pollution index’ and ‘cough trigger’.

In addition to the people who are busy brainstorming, some also suggest that the government should focus more on relieving the dense smog rather than providing a fancy name.

PM2.5 was among 239 English terms and abbreviations whose inclusion in a new edition of the Contemporary Chinese Dictionary last year prompted a letter of protest from more than 100 scholars. GDP and NBA were also seen as linguistic pollutants threatening the long-term health of Chinese script, but globalization and pinyin text input make the Roman alphabet’s excision unlikely.

Some netizens took the issue less seriously. From a selection by Southern Metropolis Daily, via CDT Chinese:

@_vivo：建议叫国民体质辅助进化颗粒2.5(超微无害型)。

@_vivo: Let’s call them national fitness supplement particles 2.5 (of the extremely small and non-harmful variety).

@魏世江：砖家不把心思放在污染治理上，净干些没用的事。有本事把所有数学教科书上的符号全改成中文，把所有化学反应方程式也用中文，再牛逼点，你把所有计算机教科书上的程序代码都改成中文啊?

@weishijiang: These bricksperts aren’t thinking about pollution control, they’re just wasting their time. Why not change all the symbols into math textbooks into Chinese characters, or all the formulae for chemical reactions … even better, why not change all the programming code in computer textbooks into Chinese script?

@萍心而论：看评论笑死我了，北京致咳物、毒尘、下午两点半、北京灰、小250……我觉得吧，砖家可能是想把PM2.5当宠物养了。不明白一个已被大家理解并接受的词汇，再改成别的名又有何意义。

@pingxinerlun: I’m laughing my head off at this discussion: Beijing cough particles, toxic dust, 2:30 p.m., Beijing gray, Little 250 … I think these bricksperts might be planning to raise the PM2.5 particles as pets. I don’t see the point in changing a term that everyone already understands and accepts.

@我系J臣：按照央视的习惯，应该译成“皮阿姆贰点伍”吧。

@woxiJchen: According to CCTV custom, it should be called “pi emu er dian wu” ["PM2.5" phonetically transcribed into Chinese].

@邵明波：别折腾了。建议官方将其定名为“幸福颗粒”吧。

@shaomingbo: Don’t fret. I suggest that officials call them “Happiness Particles.”

Alia at Offbeat China rounded up some of the more colorful suggestions contributed by netizens, but conceded that the rather drab Xi keli wu 细颗粒物 (“fine particles”) appeared to be the frontrunner.

• “Shitizen 250” – PM is the initials of Pi Min (屁民) which, in Chinese, means citizens who have been treated by their government like shit [CDT translates this term as "rabble"]; and 250 is a slang in Chinese for the dumb and stupid.
• “Happy Particles with Chinese Characteristics”
• “National Secret” – Background: last week, China Environmental Bureau refused to dislocate soil pollution data in the country, saying the information is state secret.
• “GDP Chain Index”
• “Harmony Particle”

See more suggestions at Offbeat China and more on PM2.5 and air pollution via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, Chinese characters, Chinese language, netizens, PM2.5
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[… E]ven a reader with no Chinese language skills will notice a troubling difference: [on Sina Weibo], commenters lit virtual candles of mourning; [on Tencent Weibo], reactions consisted of laughter and celebration.

The Chinese people have long had mixed feelings toward Japan. After the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake — the largest ever recorded in Japanese history — hit the island nation, some Chinese Web users expressed condolences, while others rejoiced in Japan’s tragedy. But why is there such a sharp divide between users of two different Weibo platforms? Are Chinese Web users on Sino Weibo more sympathetic toward the Japanese? Does anti-Japan sentiment really run stronger on Tencent Weibo?

Some Chinese Web users certainly think so. “Sina Weibo users are obviously relatively mature,” posted one user, @卟懂_作业先森他不爱我, on Sina Weibo. “This is why I don’t use Tencent Weibo,” commented another user, @姬旦. Defenders of Tencent Weibo, however, attribute the difference in online reaction to the different degrees of censorship. “This is because some posts on Sina Weibo were ‘killed,’” argued @千树枯, “If you look at it from this perspective, Sina Weibo is truly tragic!”

In both cases, however, initial responses may be misleading, and Funakoshi concludes that “Netizen opinion is fickle, time-dependent, and unreliable — especially when viewed as a proxy for Chinese opinion.” For more on the potential pitfalls of Weibo-watching, see ‘Weibo’s Limits and the Ballad of China’s Middle Class‘ at CDT.

Sina Weibo’s candle icon previously appeared on CDT after it was temporarily removed last June so it could not be “lit” in memory of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.

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Post tags: Algeria, anti-Japan, Japanese, netizens, public opinion, sina weibo, Tencent Weibo, weibo
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Tigers, rhinos and elephants are notoriously poached to satisfy high demand in Asia for their parts, which are falsely assumed to have medicinal properties. Experts warn that sun bears and Asiatic black bears, known colloquially as ”moon bears,” are on a similar route to endangerment, although their plight draws less media attention. ”No bears are extinct, but all Asian ones are threatened,” said Chris Shepherd, a conservation biologist and deputy regional director of the wildlife trade group Traffic who is based in Malaysia.

Legal farming was conceived as a way of increasing the supply of bile to reduce the motivation for poaching wild bears, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. But there is no evidence that it has done so, it noted in a resolution passed last September, and there is concern among conservationists that it “may be detrimental.”

The resolution also called on countries with legal bear farms to close down the illegal ones, to ensure that no wild bears are added to farms; to conduct research into bear bile substitutes (there are dozens of synthetic and herbal alternatives) and to conduct an independent peer-reviewed scientific analysis on whether farming protects wild bears.

Some groups argue that the increased supply of farmed bile has only exacerbated demand. ”Because a surplus of bear bile is being produced, bile is used in many non-medical products, like bear bile wine, shampoo, toothpaste and face masks,” Animals Asia says. Since bear farming began in China in the early 1980’s, bear bile has been aggressively promoted as a cure-all remedy for problems like hangovers, the group added.

Despite the efforts to curb animal cruelty, China’s zoos are now subject to scrutiny after several animal abuse cases caused by zoo visitors, from The Huffington Post:

A Jan. 19 report from a zoo in Shaoguan City alleges that a 27-year-old man climbed into an ostrich enclosure, then proceeded to bite the bird to death in front of onlookers. The man was later arrested and taken to the hospital, according to The Nanfang.

In early January, visitors to Hangzhou Zoo were caught on camera apparently pelting lions with snowballs.

Days later, zoo workers at the Rural Grand View Garden, located in Shenzen, discovered their crocodile pit had been filled with rocks and trash by visitors attempting to force the hibernating creatures to move. Spectators were also said to have hurled projectiles at the sleeping crocs, reports the Shenzen Evening News. The Nanfang reports most of the crocodiles in the enclosure died as a result.

“For cultural and economic reasons, animal rights awareness is one of those areas where China is still lagging the developed world,” explained Global Post senior Hong Kong correspondent Benjamin Carlson.

After pictures of lions getting pelted with snowballs was put onto Weibo, netizens have responded to the abuses inflicted by zoo visitors, according to China Daily:

They were reposted almost 80,000 times, with thousands of comments left by angry Internet users criticizing the visitors’ behavior.

One user, named “Sina Zhejiang”, said in the post that as some visitors kept throwing snowballs at two lions, they had nowhere to hide and curled up in a corner, shaking.

But the manager said the zoo had no right to fine visitors who abused the animals. What they could do is to call for better treatment of these animals.

Mang Ping, professor with the Central Institute of Socialism, who has studied the welfare of zoo animals since 2003, said abuse of zoo animals by visitors or zookeepers was commonplace in China. But the law cannot protect zoo animals, because the definition on wild animals is not clear.

© Melissa M. Chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: animal rights, animal safety, netizens, traditional medicine
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Hu Xijin as a loyal dog. “Don’t go! My master is about to undress! Just give him ten more years!” (Rebel Pepper)

Official corruption is front and center on Weibo. As netizens expose greedy politicians online, Xi Jinping is vowing to crack down. Among the issues citizens want addressed is the lack of public disclosure of officials’ financial assets.

On December 19, Global Times Chief Editor Hu Xijin addressed the issue of financial disclosure on Weibo, bringing on a barrage of angry comments. His post was gone the next morning:

@HuXijin: I think it is unrealistic to immediately have all officials publicly disclose their assets. If we push the process, we will inevitably create more problems than the ones we already need to solve. But financial disclosure is the way of the future. The clear road map and timetable for supporting financial disclosure nationally involves, first, implementation among reserve and newly appointed officials. Those who do not disclose will not be hired. From there, we can transition all officials to the system of disclosure. If we can complete this process in ten years’ time, China will be quite fortunate.

Gone, too, was a lively exchange between Caijing Magazine and Hu:

@Caijing: [Middle of the Night] Why is it unrealistic to immediately have all officials publicly disclose their assets? Could you specify which new problems it will create? If it’s that the prison system won’t be able to handle the influx, why not just build more prisons? You’d stimulate demand and create jobs in one fell swoop.

@HuXijin: Heh heh, how old are you? Could you post this under your name instead of Caijing’s?

Netizens took Hu to task:

@ProudBreeze: If the reform fails, then the revolution will undoubtedly come. If we have to wait ten years for minor progress like disclosing government officials’ financial assets, then how long must we wait for other reforms? One more question: do you think the party-state could afford to wait ten years? If there is no substantial action, people will lose faith in you within five years.

@傲气尘风：改革不成，则革命必来！一个小小的公示都要等上十年，其它的改革又要多久？再问一句，你觉得党国等得起十年吗?若无实质的动作，不出五年，民众就会失去对你们的信心。

@hu_jia: Global Times Chief Editor Hu Xijin says before going to work this morning, he will delete the Weibo post which says we need ten years to disclose officials’ assets. This post has 3,000 fantastic comments. One of the newest: “Ten years from now the officials will be hung on the street lamps, and their assets will be disclosed naturally.” For Communist Party officials, the outcome of financial disclosure will be terrible, but will it be better if they don’t disclose? Financial disclosure has to happen immediately. There are no technical or legal barriers. Refusing to disclose financial assets is proof of the corruption of the Chinese Communist Party.

@hu_jia：环球时报主编胡锡进说今早上班之前会删掉他关于官员财产公开要十年的微博。此条微博三千条评论很精彩，最新一条是：“十年后官员们都被挂路灯上了，财产自然就会公开了。”对共产党的官员而言，公开财产结局很坏，不公开财产的结局就会好吗。财产公开必须马上实施，不存在技术和法律障碍。拒绝公开财产，就是中共贪腐的证据。

@MaGuanqingHibernate: It’s not realistic for you to disclose financial assets, yet it is realistic for you to spend with extravagance while citizens drift hopelessly?

@马观晴已冬眠：官员财产公开制度不现实，你们奢侈挥霍，国家公民颠沛流离就现实？！

Hu aids in the Wolf Vegetarian Plan. “Just wait a moment, Brother, and we’ll be all done!” (Rebel Pepper)

@Elselooker: For the disclosure of officials’ personal assets, Hu Xijin wildly suggests that we “first implement [it] among reserve and newly appointed officials. Those who do not disclose will not be hired. From there, we can transition all officials to the system of disclosure. If we can complete this process in ten years’ time…” An excuse like this shows that the well-fed cannot know how the starving suffer. It’s obvious he’s dodging the issue. If the people’s resistance doesn’t continue to grow in scale and brutality, to the point that the official system can’t control them, we won’t achieve financial disclosure in 10,000 years!

@监政铲腐：公布个财产，胡锡进 竟然规划，“先从新后备和新提拔的官员开始财产公开，不公开的不予提拔。然后逐步向全体官员过渡。如果这个进程能10年内完成”，这真是饱汉不知饿汉饥的说辞，推脱之意非常明显，如果没有人民群众越来越大面积的高效强力的抗争，直到让公器也无法控制，恐怕一万年也难！

@Poetjustice: Hu Xijin thinks “it is unrealistic to immediately have all officials publicly disclose their assets. If we push the process, we will inevitably create more problems than the ones we already need to solve.”–I would like to ask Chief Hu: Why is it unrealistic? Which new problems will it create? How could Sweden implement financial disclosure more than 200 years ago? How could most countries in the world implement it? How could Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan implement it? Is it true that the superiority of socialism lies in the infeasibility of officials’ financial disclosure?

@徐昕：胡锡进认为：立即实行所有官员财产公开制度不现实。如果强推它，新制造的问题必将多于它要解决的问题——请教胡总：为什么不现实？会制造哪些新问题？为什么瑞典200多年前就可实行？为什么世界大多数国家可实行？为什么港澳台可实行？难道社会主义优越性就在于不能实行官员财产公开制度吗？

@GuoGuangdong: “Heh heh, how old are you?”–This’ll go viral.

@郭光东：“呵呵，你几岁？”——胡总编这句估计要火。

@Cinderana: Why is it unrealistic to disclose financial assets right now? 90% of the countries in the world have disclosed officials’ assets. Can’t we display the superiority of socialism here? If we wait for another ten years, the corrupt officials will all be retired. Mr. Hu even goes on to ask how old the other person is. Doesn’t he just say the darndest things? Mr. Hu, when you comment on historical figures, would you please ask yourself how old you are first?

@迷仰：为什么马上公开财产不现实？世界90%的国家都公开了，社会主义的优越性不能在这儿体现一下吗？再等个10年，贪官们也退休了吧。还问别人几岁，真是态度可掬。胡编您下次评价历史人物的时候也先问问自己几岁好吗！

@Weiwenjinhechu: Ten years is still too fast. We should design a hundred-year plan, no, a thousand-year plan!

@为问今何处：十年还是太快了，应该设计个百年大计，不，千年大计。

@Northwind: Hu Xijin says the disclosure of officials’ assets  “will inevitably create more problems than the ones we already need to solve.” He has essentially made it clear that the bulk of officials are corrupt. He directly proves that China’s anti-corruption effort is a complete failure. (Of course, everybody knows this, but it’s rare for Frisbee Hu to say so. Don’t pretend that you are confident in the ideology, the system, and the path.)

@北风：胡锡进说，（财产公开）“新制造的问题必将大于它要解决的问题”，这句话其实已经挑明了中国官员的腐败占了大多数，也直接说明中国的反腐败是彻底失败的。（当然这是人尽皆知的事，但飞盘胡能说出来，也难得。就别装什么理论自信制度自信道路自信了。）

@Xushaolin: This weibo from Hu Xijin last night was deleted. Don’t know if it was deleted by him because he felt it was inappropriate, or deleted by Sina. I think this Hu guy sometimes fights fire with fire. Intentionally or not, he often reveals the real thoughts of government officials. Judging from netizens’ comments, his idea is a gross violation of the popular will. The disclosure of officials’ personal assets is the right way to go, and we must proceed. We can be careful and thoughtful in the process, but this cannot be used as an excuse to stall.

@老徐时评：胡锡进昨晚的这条微博被删了，不知是他自己感觉不妥删的还是新浪给删的。感觉胡这个人有时真是个高级黑，经常有意无意地将官员们内心真实想法泄露出 来。从当时网友的评论看，他的想法是多么的有违民意。官员财产公示是大势所趋必须往前走。程序上可以谨慎周到，但绝不能成为无所作为拖延时间的借口。

Via CDT Chinese. Translation by Mengyu Dong.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: financial disclosure, Global Times, Hu xijin, Netizen Voices, netizens, official corruption, sina weibo, weibo
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“The entire city’s propaganda team includes 60,000 people in the system and over two million outside of the system. We must strengthen the positive guidance of hot topics. Every single propaganda worker must successfully utilize new media. ‘Read Weibo, open a Weibo account, post to Weibo, and study Weibo’ to develop the Internet’s positive energy.”

At yesterday’s municipal propaganda department meeting in Beijing, Vice Mayor Lu Wei implored 60,000 propaganda workers “in the system” and over two million “outside the system” to “use Weibo.” According to official records, Beijing has a population of more than 20 million–from Lu’s statement, one out of every ten Beijingers is a “propaganda worker.” The South China Morning Post has confirmed this number.

Netizens are stunned. “2 mil +?!… I hope so!” (200多万？！。。。但愿如此！) snorts Sina Corp. Executive Vice President Tong Chen (@老沉).

A Caijing (@财经网) Weibo post on the news circulated quickly before it was deleted. Nanfang Media Group‘s Southern Metropolis Daily (@南方都市报) also tweeted the story; the comment function is disabled on this post.

Southern Metropolis Daily’s post.

CDT Chinese has gathered Weibo commentary on the shocking news:

@Weizhuang:Question: Who is paying these people? Who’s money is it? Who’s interests do they speak for?!

@卫庄：【问】这些人谁来养？这钱谁来出？他们提谁说话？

@HengyangMala: The Party is paying them. Do you think they will speak for your interests instead of Party’s ? !

@衡阳凯哥麻辣点评：党给的钱，不替党说话替你说话啊！！

@WonderfulLife: Weibo will become just like News Simulcast~~

@晶睬的生活：以后微博就跟新闻联播一样了~~

Caijing’s deleted post.

@wenzhengbing: Two million zombies are ready to attack.

@我是闻正兵：200万僵尸即将来袭。

@gigico: 60,000 Professional fifty centers, two million temps.

@大果果李：6万职业五毛，200万临时工五毛

@troy1979: The city’s crawling with fifty centers.

@2007豆霸：满城尽是五毛党

Via CDT Chinese.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, censorship, Internet censorship, Lu Wei, Netizen Voices, netizens, propaganda, sina weibo, weibo
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If you are interested in participating in this project by submitting and/or translating terms, please contact the CDT editors at CDT [at] chinadigitaltimes [dot] net.

‘Frisbee Hu’ has come back into fashion online during the Southern Weekly protests. Weibo user @sunjinwei74 quipped on January 8 about “that cruel moment when the dog nabs the Frisbee.”

飞盘胡 (Fēipán Hú): Frisbee Hu

Amid the fallout of the Bo Xilai scandal, Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Global Times, published an editorial entitled “Bo’s Case Shows Resilience of Rule of Law.”

Netizens were scornful of the attempt to find a silver lining in the scandal, wondering why, if the rule of law was so resilient in China, Bo was not questioned earlier for a pattern of alleged misconduct that stretched over decades.

One Weibo user posted his two reactions to Hu Xijin’s comments:

(1) Master Hu has a knack for finding the tasty morsels in any turd you stick in his mouth. (2) No matter how far his masters throw the Frisbee, Master Hu will always fetch it back for them.

1、什么屎到了胡老师嘴里都能吃出甜味来 2、主人的飞盘甩得再远，胡老师都能给她叼回来

“Frisbee Hu” is an editor who will eagerly take a positive spin on whatever facts the government throws him.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, Global Times, Hu xijin, netizens, southern weekly protest 2013, word of the week
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A few years ago, a netizen with a sly sense of humor began using the terms guidang (your [honorable] party) and guiguo (your [honorable] state). Gui literally means “noble” or “expensive” and has long been placed before nouns as a polite way of saying “your”: Thus guixing means “your honorable surname,” and so on. Guiguo has also, for a long time, been an established way of saying “your country” when people from different countries are talking to each other in a formal way.

But now, in some circles on the Internet, guiguo has taken on the sarcastic meaning of “your state”—in other words, the state that belongs to you rulers, not to me. The question “What is guiguo?” has popped up in Internet chat rooms. In one of these, in October 2010, a netizen wrote: “It turns out that this guo is not our guo, but the guo of a certain dang [that is, the Communist Party]. This fact makes the terms guiguo and guidang appropriate.”

But if netizens are putting ironic distance between themselves and “your state,” the question arises of what they do identify with at the national level. What is it, in the new day, to be Chinese? This is a big question, and the answers that are beginning to appear are only tentative.

These terms and many others are explained in CDT’s Grass Mud Horse Lexicon. Last October at The Atlantic (via CDT), meanwhile, Brian Fung explored the strange longevity of the generally unloved English word ‘netizen’.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, citizenship, Internet culture, netizens, perry link, Xiao Qiang
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“At the moment there is a relief rally going on,” said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group and frequent guest on PBS’ Nightly Business Report.

“But I think now we’re going to have to deal with phase two of that poison pill,” he said, referring to cutting federal spending and the upcoming debt ceiling talks.

U.S. Congress has tied the economy to a bungee cord, he said. ” We jumped off the cliff temporarily on January 1st, then came the deal on taxes, so we came back up safely back on the cliff. But now we may go back off the cliff if there is no agreement on the spending side.”

Spending cuts are a highly incendiary topic for Democrats and Republicans. “They go right to the very core of the philosophical difference between the two parties,” he said, adding that he foresees a heated debate over the next two months on the issue.

On the Chinese blogosphere, meanwhile, Tea Leaf Nation’s David Wertime writes that netizens “approached the problem with a familiar mixture of humor and cynicism:”

[...]Across comment threads, many reacted as a majority of Americans have–decrying the faux crisis as a manufactured political “show,” a “performance by the two parties.” Perhaps most vividly, @羽林踏雪 declared it a “rotten Hollywood drama.”

Like any “rotten” performance, the fiscal cliff showdown seemed to Weibo users to lack suspense, with its resolution “just a matter of time.” @司徒柳桂 wrote, “It was always going to pass; the Americans always play out Hollywood plots where the lead is saved at the very last second.” @谢天添Narada added, “They are playing every time; eventually everyone gets sick of watching and doesn’t get anxious about it.”@一隅运筹 wrote, “I never thought they’d actually fall [off the cliff], although I wanted to see it. Haha.”

Indeed, a number of users simply laughed. @许泰毓不能服输 wrote he was “laughing so hard I’m speechless,” while @草莓奶茶爸 marveled, “People in the U.S. government are really laughable.”

But a twin strain of cynicism ran in the other direction, lambasting mainstream news outlets in China for focusing too much on America’s troubles, much as a far larger contingent of Web users had done after Chinese media appeared to downplay the school massacre at Guangshan in favor of reporting on the U.S. school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut just hours later.

“China can relax — for now,” writes Fudan University’s Shen Dingli for Foreign Policy. But given how intimately linked the Chinese and American economies have become, and given how much U.S. debt China has purchased over the years, Shen asks – “Is this any way to treat your banker?”

China helps the U.S. economy by lending money to the United States by buying Treasury bonds – it now holds $1.16 trillion of U.S. debt. U.S.-China cooperation has helped save the United States from financial insolvency — and China has benefited from this system by keeping its currency competitive — but this enablement has come with risks, including weakening the credibility of the U.S. dollar. To fundamentally improve its economy, the United States needs to stop the financial gimmicks and boost its exports the old-fashioned way, through innovation, while encouraging its citizens to increase their incomes and decrease their spending. China wants to partner with a healthy, balanced United States, not a profligate, irresponsible one.

And even if America’s day of reckoning has been postponed, China still faces the risk that the United States could fall off one fiscal cliff or another in the future. Without a fundamental restructuring of the U.S. budget that significantly raises income while cutting expenses, the United States looks like a disaster waiting to happen.

No wonder many Chinese see an America in decline, even if many Americans don’t believe it yet. We see few signs that the United States is ready to reinvent its national narrative and mission. But here in Shanghai, we understand basic math pretty well. The United States needs to balance its consumption and savings; weigh its pursuit of al Qaeda in Afghanistan with other foreign-policy goals; and cut its spending on defense and social welfare. How can Washington be responsible for the rest of the world if it can’t even take care of itself?

And while the Chinese media has lampooned the U.S. government for its fiscal charade, former Treasury Department official David Loevinger and other economists told Reuters on Thursday that the world’s second largest economy has its own fish to fry:

“If China tries to sustain growth by adding debt and investing it inefficiently it will be like cotton candy: a short-term high with no lasting value,” said Loevinger, now an Asia analyst in Los Angeles at TCW Group Inc., which oversees about $135 billion. “The U.S. got into trouble because institutions like Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac were too big to fail and had a toxic mix of private shareholders and implicit government guarantees. China’s financial system is full of Freddies and Fannies.”

…

Xi and his team are inheriting an economy more leveraged than the one President Hu Jintao took over in 2003. Government, corporate and consumer debt rose last year by 15 percentage points to an estimated 206 percent of GDP, Standard Chartered said in a November report. In March 2003 it stood at 150 percent.

Borrowers are using some new loans to “plaster over non- performing credits” while so-called shadow banking is growing too fast, said economists led by Stephen Green. They estimated that a bad-loan ratio of 12 percent would erase the banking industry’s 7.5 trillion yuan ($1.2 trillion) in capital.

Citing Loevinger’s comments, however, Did Kirsten Tatlow of The New York Times points out a key difference between China and America’s debt situations: “China’s risk is mostly domestic, with its holdings in U.S. debt carried by the Ministry of Finance and the state banks it runs, unlike the U.S.’s debt, which is held by parties around the world.”

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: debt crisis, economic growth, fiscal cliff, microblogs, netizens, online public opinion, U.S. relations, Xi Jinping, XInhua News
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