China Digital Times

Stories tagged with: Beijing (416)

• Death Verdict for a Beijing Bribery Career

  

  From Caijing Magazine:

  Liu Zhihua appeared worn down and older than his 59 years when he stood before the Hengshui Intermediate People’s Court for sentencing October 18.

  The former vice mayor of Beijing had just been convicted on the bribe-taking charges pending against him since his sacking 28 months earlier.

  Prosecutors said Liu accepted about 6.97 million yuan in bribes while serving as vice mayor from 1997 to 2006 and director of the management committee of Zhongguancun Science Park from 2001 to 2006.

  » Read more
  • November 4, 2008 7:30 PM

• Hiking Into Chinese History

  

  In the New York Times, Danwei’s Jeremy Goldkorn takes a trip to the mountains surrounding Beijing:

  The mountains protected the city from barbarians on the plains to the north, west and east, and that was one of the reasons why Kublai Khan established his capital there in 1267, starting what the Chinese call the Yuan Dynasty. The city was then called Dadu. You can still see some ruins from that time at Beijing’s Dadu Ruins Park between the Third and Fourth ring roads north of the city center. The park contains some replica stuff, and an old mud wall that dates from Kublai Khan’s time.

  But there is much more Mongolian romance to be found outside of the city in the mountains, where you can combine historical pursuits with some of the finest day hiking in China.

  The area around the village of Fanzipai in Miyun County to the north of Beijing is mountainous and wild. There are villages like Fanzipai in the valleys, and you can use them as jumping-off points for hikes into the mountains.

  Show on map

  » Read more
  • November 3, 2008 2:19 PM

• CDT Bookshelf: The City of Heavenly Tranquility: Beijing in the History of China

  

  Taipei Times gives a review of Jasper Becker’s new book,The City of Heavenly Tranquility: Beijing in the History of China.

  You might think that City of Heavenly Tranquility, with its subtitle “Beijing in the History of China,” was a serene survey of one of the world’s great cities, looking at its history from its foundation to its contemporary, post-Olympics face. And you’d be right. These things are there, with the story excellently told into the bargain. But there’s also another theme, for which even the full title doesn’t prepare you. At its heart, this book is an appalled lament for one of the greatest acts of historical vandalism of modern times — the destruction, within the last 10 years, of a gorgeous, resplendent, ancient city and its replacement by a hurriedly erected modern megalopolis that could, architecturally speaking, be just about anywhere on Earth.

  [...] “In some ways,” Becker writes, “the destruction of old Beijing and the eviction of its residents can be considered a collective punishment visited on a population that had dared to rebel.” He cites Bertold Brecht writing after the 1953 uprising in East Berlin — the people had failed the government, and so it was necessary for the government to relocate them and replace them with more amenable subjects

  [...] This is an exceedingly engaging book, with far more detail than it’s possible to indicate here. The past and the present leap out with equal vividness because Becker combines library research with a good deal of oral history — seeking out individuals who remember things and writing down what they tell him. He finds, for instance, the wife of the famous architectural historian Liang Sicheng (梁思成) who, at Qinghua University, was severely persecuted by Red Guards. She shows him where the guard factions fought and where Jiang Qing (江青) addressed the crowds.

  The Economist also gives a review from another angle.

  Mr Becker, a British journalist, offers something much richer than a work of reportage. “City of Heavenly Tranquility” has two particular strengths. One is his reweaving of the threads of Beijing’s past to recreate the city of street markets, temple fairs and the “little games” that so delighted Beijingers: for instance, their passion for keeping fighting crickets, fed with honey, and for inserting tiny carved flutes of bamboo into the tail-feathers of pigeons; whole flocks created aerial music over this reviewer’s courtyard house just a decade ago. In search of such richness, Mr Becker writes with sympathy and humour of meetings with the last court eunuch; with some of the remaining Manchus who only a century ago ruled China but today are all but invisible; and with those few brave people who from the beginning recognised the Communists as being a danger to Beijing’s great heritage.

  The other strength is the depiction of Beijing as a canvas for the projection of others’ fantasies. In the case of 17th-century Jesuits or 20th-century Westerners in search of the exotic, this was fairly harmless. With purges, famine and urban destruction, Mao Zedong visited immense grief on a city he treated as a blank page. But it is China’s recent dictators who have finished off Beijing, bulldozing its past with the criminal approval of the world’s leading architects throwing up “signature” structures (I.M. Pei is the honourable dissenter). When Albert Speer, son of Hitler’s architect, was called in to make the new city even more bombastic, he explained: “What I am trying to do is to transport a 2,000-year-old city into the future. Berlin in the 1930s, that was just megalomania.”

  From The Globalist, here is an excerpted chapter about the Broken Bowl Tea House in Caishikou (菜市口), in memorial of ”the Six Gentlemen (六君子).”

  For more about the deconstruction of the old Beijing, read this early article in The New York Times and also this book, The Last Days of Old Beijing, on the CDT bookshelf.

  Show on map

  » Read more
  • October 26, 2008 3:36 AM

• Documentary: My Beijing Birthday

  

  James Fallows, Beijing-based correspondent with The Atlantic, recommends an hour-long documentary by Howie Snyder. He writes in his blog:

  My wife and I saw a preview screening of the film before a small audience in Beijing back in July. (The audience was small mainly because of the pre-Olympic Beijing security hysteria. Authorities were discouraging or prohibiting gatherings of any size, for any reason, on grounds of general paranoia.) My main reaction after seeing it was the hope that very large audiences would be able to see it soon.

  The set-up and plot-line sound bizarre when described. Howie Snyder, a New Yorker and skillful Mandarin-speaker now in his 40s, was in Beijing twelve years ago attending a school for traditional Chinese “cross-talk” stand-up comics. All the other students in the class were Chinese eight-year-olds. They specialize young here. Part of the film is footage of Snyder and his classmates back then; the other part is a revisit to the school this year, showing very dramatically what the passage of time has meant for Snyder, for the city of Beijing, for the tough-but-heart-of-gold director of the school, and for the kids, now age 20.

  The official website of documentary has more details.

  » Read more
  • October 22, 2008 10:08 AM

• Beijing Offers Cash to Curb Capital’s Pollution

  

  Beijing has taken a furthur step to tackle its pollution, Reuters reports:

  The Beijing government will give companies who stop highly polluting production up to 2.3 million yuan ($336,500) as a bonus, state media said Sunday, in the latest attempt to clear the capital’s notoriously poor air.

  “The move is to stimulate the replacement of high-pollution industries with environmentally friendly economies,” the official Xinhua news agency cited the Finance Bureau of Beijing as saying.

  “Companies such as small cement and paper producers will be on the top of our list,” the department said.

  Also see an article from Xinhua

  Photo courtesy of Phototime

  » Read more
  • October 19, 2008 7:58 PM

• Ex-Beijing Official Gets Death Sentence, Reprieve

  

  From AP:

  A former Beijing vice mayor in charge of overseeing Olympic construction projects has been given a death sentence for corruption, a court clerk and his lawyer said Sunday.

  The Intermediate People’s Court in Hengshui, a city outside Beijing, ordered the death sentence Saturday after finding Liu Zhihua guilty of taking bribes, said a court clerk who would only give his surname, Ma.

  However, the sentence was “suspended” for two years, Ma said. The reprieve means if Liu shows good behavior his sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment.

  Read also Former Beijing vice mayor given suspended death penalty for bribery by Xinhua.

  » Read more
  • October 18, 2008 11:05 PM

• China Watches Over Internet Café Customers In Web Crackdown

  

  From The Times:

  All visitors to internet cafés in Beijing are to be required to have their photographs taken in a stringent new control on the public use of cyberspace.

  Hopes that the Olympic Games would usher in a relaxed approach to the internet had already been hit hard when the “Great Firewall of China” — the blocking of websites deemed subversive — was reimposed not long after foreign reporters left the country.

  The temporary lifting of the firewall applied to only a few sites and Chinese citizens experienced few changes.

  According to the latest rules, by mid-December all internet cafés in the main 14 city districts must install cameras to record the identities of their web surfers, who must by law be 18 or over. There are more than 250 million internet users in China, approximately ten times more than there were in 2000.

  » Read more
  • October 16, 2008 11:01 PM

• Former Beijing Vice Mayor Goes On Trial

  

  From AP:

  A former Beijing vice mayor in charge of overseeing Olympic construction projects has gone on trial for corruption, a court clerk said yesterday.

  The trial of Liu Zhihua (劉志華) began on Tuesday at the Intermediate Court in the city of Hengshui outside Beijing, a clerk surnamed Wang said by telephone.

  The clerk declined to give any details, saying he was not authorized to speak to the media.

  Liu had been dismissed from his post in 2006, kicked out of the Chinese Communist Party, and handed over to prosecutors to face bribery charges.

  Read also Trail for Beijing’s Former Vice Major by Luo Changping.

  » Read more
  • October 15, 2008 8:02 PM

• After Popular Blue Skies During Olympics, Beijing Brings Back Pollution Controls

  

  From Christian Science Monitor:

  Wednesday was a “blue sky day” in the Chinese capital.

  But whether that has anything at all to do with the new traffic restrictions that the Beijing government imposed this week seems highly doubtful. There may be less smoke, but there are just as many mirrors when it comes to presenting pollution statistics in China.

  A “blue sky day” in official parlance means a day when the Air Pollution Index is below 100, indicating that the air quality is “excellent” or “good.” It doesn’t necessarily mean you can see the sky, or even the clouds; nor do Chinese definitions of “excellent” and “good” match international ones, but you can’t be picky when you live in Beijing.

  » Read more
  • October 15, 2008 7:49 PM

• Beijing Monitors Foreign Financial Groups

  

  From FT:

  Beijing has stepped up its monitoring of international financial institutions in the country amid fears that the failure of a large foreign group could see the global credit crisis spill over into a largely insulated China.

  China’s securities regulator has ordered all joint venture fund management groups to report on the health and financial position of their foreign partners and explain how the global turmoil could affect operations in China.

  “This is a very normal action to take under the current extraordinary circumstances,” said one regulatory official who asked not to be named because he was not authorised to speak publicly. “It is the government’s responsibility to do this in order to protect the interests of Chinese investors and the stability of the domestic market.”

  » Read more
  • October 11, 2008 8:35 PM

• A Beijing Petitioning Adventure of 40 Parents Who Lost Children

  

  The following is an account of the heart-wrenching experience shared by 40 parents of missing children. After the Olympics and Paralympics had finished, they went to Beijing to petition for help to find their children. Written by one of the parents and translated by CDT via a blog post.

  While the story is being spread quickly over the Net, it is also being censored by bloghosts and BBS sites with equal rapidity.

  Over recent years, there have been countless cases of child smuggling across the country. We’ve been traveling all over the country looking for our children, selling our properties and belongings, and raking up huge amounts of debt in the process. Among the family members and relatives of these lost children, some have died, some have become mentally ill, some have fallen sick, and most have at least been psychologically exhausted.

  Of course some of these cases could have been solved in a timely manner, but due to all kinds of human factors (I won’t elaborate here because of my concerns with the public security bureau), they only establish a case 24 hours after a child is reported missing. I think this facilitates the smugglers in that it gives them more time to transport the children away from the vicinities within that 24 hours. We reported these cases all the way up the government chain, but months passed without a single result. Some families gave up.

  I posted bills across towns, on TVs and in newspapers and met with a lot of parents who shared the same fate online. I also learned that a Henan family sent a letter about their 8-month-old missing child through some channel to the premier Wen Jiabao. He made a note of this and within eight days, public security broke the case. With this last ray of hope, we decided to go together to Beijing in order to let the premier know about our pain. And in order to not affect the state image, we decided to travel to Beijing after the Olympics, and chose September 22.

  On September 22, we checked into a cheap hostel and stayed mostly in the basement rooms with some really poor parents choosing to camp out at the train station. More than 40 of us, from 10 different provinces, went all the way to the Bird’s Nest the next morning and put up our posters and banners detailing our experiences. A college student learned about our cases and offered to help us with our petitioning. The scene also attracted an American reporter, but we refused to be interviewed as we feared bringing embarrassment to the government. Furthermore, we figured that CCTV, China’s premier media outlet, would be a better choice for our complaints.

  With the guidance of the college student volunteer, we made our journey to the CCTV building, but soon realized that we were being trailed by who I guess were three state security agents, probably worried that we might be activists of some sort. At the entrance of CCTV, we were greeted by an armed policeman who asked us what our business was, which we told him. He said he would need to report to his boss but suggested that such a case would not fit with the “harmonious society” slogan. We understood this as meaning that we would have no chance to make our voice heard there. Then, one by one we unfurled our posters at the entrance. This prompted the guards to call the police. Three police cars soon arrived and started questioning us about the purpose of our trip. The college student asked all of us to return to the hostel, and offered to stay behind and deal with the police. Later we called and learned that he was released from the police station only after his school official made a trip to pick him up from the authorities.

  We returned to the hostel but later decided to send three representatives to CCTV again to see whether we could get onto a program on the air. An old man told us diplomatically that the chances were very slim. We then made a trip to Wangfujing, where we ran into ABC and another foreign TV crew. Now without hope for domestic media coverage, we decided that we needed to talk to foreigners. However, these interviews weren’t so smooth either. The hostel owner got word from the police that we were talking to the foreign media and, under pressure, wouldn’t allow interviews on his premises. The police claimed that the hostel owner organized the interviews. Angered, the parents rushed out of the hostel to find another place to talk to the foreign media. After that, the police made a compromise that allowed that the interviews could be done there. All those who were at the interviews, reporters included, shed tears while hearing our stories.

  On September 24, we left the hostel very early in the morning to go to the National Center for Petitions. Right upon leaving the hostel, a police car started following us. When we made our way to the Xidan area, eight more cars appeared with 80 policemen. They stopped us and asked for our IDs. A father lost his emotions and said that he was looking for his child. Right as he was about to get out his child’s photo from his backpack, a dozen or so policemen violently gripped his neck and grabbed his hair. The other parents were stunned. I went up to argue with the police but was soon myself snatched by the hair and dragged into a car. “You dare question the government?!” exclaimed one of the cops. At the detention center, our IDs were taken away and when I tried to snap a few photos of our cell, four policemen took my camera away and deleted all the photos on it. “We are the lords here,” one said.

  In the afternoon, we were taken by two prisoner vans to a petition center of the Ministry of Public Security. All 40 parents were asked to attend a meeting and forced to write down a case on paper. After writing the materials, we were put on a coach bus and with the escort of four police cars, taken to somewhere in the suburbs.

  The bus drove for half an hour and finally arrived at a petitioners reception center; we had no idea what we were here for. We were brought into a huge iron-clad hall with many guards, then went through security checks and had our cameras taken away. They yelled at us and told us to go to different rooms according to province. There were thousands of petitioners there — I think senior leaders wouldn’t need to go to the actual localities to learn about real life there; just making a trip here would do. I am from Hubei but I lost my child in Shenzhen so I went into the room of Guangdong, a cell with a small window for ventilation. I asked an old man, a 40-year-old petitioning veteran, why he was there. He said he had been asking for a redress for his treatment during the Cultural Revolution. There were screamings constantly in the rooms and local government attachés would regularly drag their “constituents” away from the center and deport them back home. I witnessed a 70-year-old lady get forcefully dragged away. I also heard that the guy who killed an American and then jumped off a building was also a petitioner. He had a case long unresolved and had resorted to extreme actions.

  Four hours later, my “government” took me away and put me under 3-day house arrest at their gueshouse in Beijing. My ID was taken away again, and I was put under watch for 24 hours. I was also asked to write a commitment to ceast and desist petitioning. The director of the government attaché office in Beijing bought me a ticket to Shenzhen and saw me off at the train station.

  Beijing used to be the seat of the emperor. We learned a big lesson from this trip. It’s fair to say that Beijing cops are the busiest in the country, and that their cars are seen everywhere. I never imagined that Beijing cops, who were always described on TV as civilized law enforcement, would treat parents of missing children with fists and kicks. I don’t understand how they could beat people like us, and I wonder what they would think if they had their own children missing. All of us parents are in great despair. We came to Beijing with hope but learned that it isn’t a place where one can reason. Where is such a place, then? Heaven?

  
  

  » Read more
  • October 2, 2008 1:59 AM

• Beijing Imposes Car Ban to Ease Pollution

  

  The car ban imposed for the Olympics has expired, but according to China Daily, Beijing will impose a new 6-month ban to try to ease air pollution beginning on October 11.

  Cars whose number plates end with 1 or 6 will be taken off roads on Monday, while those ending with 2 or 7 will be banned on Tuesday, 3 or 8 on Wednesday, 4 or 9 on Thursday and 5 or 0 on Friday. The ban does not apply on weekends.

  [...]In compensation, the restricted vehicles will be exempt from one month of vehicle tax and road maintenance fee a year. Drivers who are caught to have breached the new rule will not enjoy the exemption, according to Wang [Zhaorong, an official with the Beijing Municipal Committee of Communications].

  While most people applaud the ban on government and corporate vehicles, the ban on private cars, however, has sparked an outcry from car owners, many of whom complain it is “unfair”.

  Show on map

  » Read more
  • September 28, 2008 5:02 PM

• Chaoyang District Apologizes for Stink After Another “Stroll”

  

  Danwei translates reports about citizens of a recently-developed suburb of Beijing who are displeased with the stench coming from a nearby garbage dump. The district government recently apologized for the smell:

  According to The Beijing News, local villagers receive a 400 yuan per year per capita subsidy from the government for the stench that they have to suffer. But many villagers would rather have the landfill site moved somewhere else. The newspaper quoted a villager saying that the incidence of serious diseases has risen in recent years and suspected that it might has to do with the smell. Zou Xiaomei, a delegate to the city’s People’s Congress, has brought up the issue every year only to find things getting worse and worse.

  The government’s apology came after a protest on August 30. The protest took the form of a “stroll,” a technique that has been carried out by the environmentally-aware, new middle class, who organize and coordinate their activity via SMS and the Internet. Last year saw strolls put into practice in Xiamen, Shanghai, and Chengdu.

  » Read more
  • September 5, 2008 1:57 PM

• China Conservation Efforts Aid Aquifer Levels

  

  From the Wall Street Journal:

  Underground water levels in Beijing are rising this year, reversing a nearly decadelong decline, in part because of conservation efforts tied to the Olympics.

  Aquifer levels in the Chinese capital have risen about half a meter this year, after having fallen about one meter each year since 1999 due to drought. The shortage had forced the city to dig ever-deeper wells, which provide the bulk of its municipal water.

  The increase comes despite warnings from environmentalists that the Olympics would contribute to a greater strain on Beijing’s water resources, with water being diverted from neighboring regions to supply everything from competition venues to the 40 million ornamental flowers around the city.

  The government has rejected those admonitions. Officials say the water supply has benefited from unusually plentiful summer rains as well as decreasing demand and greater water recycling that the government pushed as part Beijing’s efforts toward a “Green Olympics.” Overall, water consumption fell to less than 3.4 billion cubic meters last year, from 4.04 billion cubic meters in 2000, officials say. Waste-water treatment rates have passed 90% as the city rolled out new treatment plants in time for the Games.

  » Read more
  • August 31, 2008 12:06 AM

• Nothing But “Blue skies” From Now On

  

  Zhu Zhe reports in the China Daily:

  Beijing is enjoying its cleanest air for 10 years and the blue skies are set to continue long after the Olympics, a top environment official said Tuesday.

  On nine of the past 18 days the air was of the very highest quality, while on the others it was rated “fairly good”, Du Shaozhong, deputy director of the Beijing environmental protection bureau, told a press conference.

  The average daily air pollution index (API) over the 18 days was 56, far below the 81 reported for last year, he said.

  » Read more
  • August 26, 2008 11:32 AM