China News: Ordos | China Digital Times (CDT)

China news tagged with: Ordos (4)

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Going Green in China, Case by Case

Ordos, Inner Mongolia, has been getting its share of attention in recent weeks with several articles mentioning it in the international media. The New York Times reports from the city on local initiatives to implement green technology in China:

Regions are vying to outdo one another in a race to develop alternative-energy sources and reduce pollution. Gansu Province in western China is building a wind farm equivalent to about 20 nuclear power facilities. In the east, Zhejiang Province is installing solar panels on roofs. Beijing bans motorcycles from the city center in favor of electric bikes.

Their efforts demonstrate that China, the world’s largest producer of the emissions blamed for global warming, will continue to accelerate development of energy from renewable sources, even as it resists binding targets for reducing carbon emissions ahead of a U.N. summit meeting in Copenhagen next month aimed at forging a new treaty to curb greenhouse gases.

Some regional officials now see environmental projects as a way to bolster their economies after decades when companies were allowed to poison the air and water without penalties while expanding output.
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- November 18, 2009 10:46 PM
China’s Empty City

Al Jazeera looks at the impact of China’s economic stimulus spending:

China’s economy is continuing to grow despite the global recession, helped by a massive government stimulus package of $585bn.

But doubts remain whether such strong growth can be sustained by public spending alone.

Al Jazeera’s Melissa Chan reports from Inner Mongolia, where a whole town built with government money is standing empty.

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- November 10, 2009 11:09 PM
‘Libelous’ Poster Receives Criminal Sentence (Updated)

Wu Baoquan’s comments towards the government landed him in prison. Roland Soong of ESWN translates a Southern Metropolis Daily article that talks about Wu’s situation, as well as the quieting of his case online:

Yesterday is the day when Wu Baoquan goes from the detention center in the city of Ordos (Inner Mongolia) into the local prison. If his appeal fails, Wu Baoquan will have to spent the next one year and eight days in prison.

On April 27, Wu Baoquan was arrested in Shenyang city because he made comments on the Internet that insulted and libeled the government as well as individual persons. After a series of judicial steps including a trial, an appeal, an increased sentence, another appeal and a sustained sentence, Wu learned on April 17 that the Ordos Middle Court has upheld the original sentence and he will have to serve prison from April 29, 2008 to April 28, 2010.

On April 19, this newspaper reported this Inner Mongolian case that was analogous to the Wang Shuai case. The difference was that Wang Shuai received an official apology as well as state compensation. But Wu Baoquan was arrested out of state, sentenced to one year in prison at the first trial and had the sentence increased to two years at the second trial. This story created a stir on the Internet at the various major forums. But at the Ordos forums at Baidu and elsewhere, discussion was limited.

Update: See also posts from the Siweiluozi blog about this case and another recent case of a Sichuan forestry bureau worker who was put on trial for “defaming” his superiors in an online post over allegations of misconduct in a reforestation project.
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- April 21, 2009 9:17 PM
In Inner Mongolia, Pushing Architecture’s Outer Limits

Fred Bernstein writes in the New York Times about a grand experiment in architecture that is taking place in an unlikely spot — a patch of steppe in Inner Mongolia:

“Basically, Ordos is Texas,” explained Michael S. Tunkey, an American architect based in Shanghai whose firm has designed an opera house that, along with half a dozen museums and a boutique hotel, will anchor Mr. Cai’s new cultural district.

He was referring to the wide open spaces, the frontier attitude and the seemingly endless flow of money (at least in good times) from natural resources. Ordos has rapidly become wealthy, largely because of huge deposits of coal, the primary fuel for China’s economic expansion.

Not long ago, residents of this region 350 miles west of Beijing lived in elaborate tents called yurts. Now, with a population of 1.5 million, many live in homes that would make New Yorkers jealous. According to Bao Chongming, the regional vice-mayor, they have the second highest per-capita income in China (trailing only Shanghai, the country’s financial capital) and an annual economic growth rate of 40 percent.

Urbane magazine, an English-language architectural publication based in Beijing, has also written about Ordos in this month’s issue. Download the pdf of their feature articles here.
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- May 2, 2008 11:09 AM