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Recently, the Chinese government has had to defend its moon photographs against allegations that the pictures were plagiarized. Sleuthing on the part of blogger Emily Lakdawalla might put these doubts to rest.
From MSNBC's Cosmic Log:
In the week since the picture was released amid much fanfare in Beijing, there have been widespread rumors that the photo was a fake, copied from an old picture collected by a U.S. space probe.The good news for the Chinese is that Planetary Society blogger Emily Lakdawalla's clears them of outright fakery. The bad news is, she found evidence that the photo was badly retouched for public release. [Full text]
The link to the original blog post is here. See also an interview with a Chinese Academy of Sciences expert about the photo from Southern Metropolis Daily, translated by Danwei. Also, refer back to this link for more on the background of this story.
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In the latest in its Choking on Growth series, the New York Times looks at the plight of the Yangtze soft-shelled turtle, of which there are possibly only two left in the world:
For many Chinese, turtles symbolize health and longevity, but the saga of the last two Yangtze giant soft-shells is more symbolic of the threatened state of wildlife and biodiversity in China. Pollution, hunting and rampant development are destroying natural habitats, and also endangering plant and animal populations.
China contains some of the world’s richest troves of biodiversity, yet the latest major survey of plants and animals reveals a bleak picture that has grown bleaker during the past decade. Nearly 40 percent of all mammal species in China are now endangered, scientists say. For plants, the situation is worse; 70 percent of all nonflowering plant species and 86 percent of flowering species are considered threatened. [Full text]
[Image: Visitors to the Changsha Zoo in China's southern Hunan Province observe the endangered Yangtze soft-shell turtle, via NYTimes.com]
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From Times Online:
China is planning to build bigger strategic reserves of key energy resources, such as petroleum and uranium, and create an energy ministry, according to a draft law published yesterday.
However, the document made little mention of the need to develop policies to tackle soaring emissions of greenhouse gases.
Energy security emerged as a key focus for the legislation, which recommends that Chinese oil companies, such as Petrochina and Sinopec, be forced to establish their own govern-ment-managed stockpiles to augment an existing national reserve scheme. [Full Text]
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From The Reuters:
China has dismissed Internet gossip that its first photo of the moon taken from a lunar orbiter might have been plagiarised from NASA, local media said on Monday.
The country launched its first lunar probe, the Chang'e 1, in October and released a photo featuring a patch of grey moon surface splotched with craters last week, hailing the mission as a "complete success".
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From The Times:
In an unprecedented alert, the Director-General of MI5 sent a confidential letter to 300 chief executives and security chiefs at banks, accountants and legal firms this week warning them that they were under attack from “Chinese state organisations”. It is believed to be the first time that the Government has directly accused China of involvement in web-based espionage. Such a blunt and explicit warning from Jonathan Evans could have serious diplomatic consequences and cast a shadow over Gordon Brown’s first official visit to China as Prime Minister early in the new year. [Full text]
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The Los Angeles Times reviews the Chinese-made Jialing JH600 motorcycle by driving it along the Silk Road:
Riding 1,700 miles in eight days isn't anything I'd normally brag about. But I was riding a Chinese motorcycle. In China. Over pavement and gravel. Across the Tianshan mountains and the Taklamakan desert. From elevations of 13,400 feet to sea level. In temperatures from freezing to 100-plus degrees. So forgive me if I seem a little self-congratulatory for trekking the Chinese wilds on a Jialing JH600 dual sport. [Full text]
The article includes a video. (With thanks to Japhet Weeks for the link).
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From China.org.cn:
A research study done by the National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention has concluded that the AIDS virus in China originated in 1989 with 146 drug addicts found in southwest China's Yunnan Province.Wu Zunyou, director of the center, disclosed this information during an AIDS-related meeting held at Tsinghua University. According to Wu, a small segment of the drug-using population in one of Yunnan's prefectures was found infected with AIDS in 1989.
The prefecture at that time had a population of 1 million. By the end of 2006 the prefecture had 1.1 million residents with twenty thousand, or 2 percent of the total population, infected with the AIDS virus. During these 17 years, AIDS spread beyond Yunnan to the rest of China. [Full Text]
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From AFP:
China is estimated to have about 700,000 HIV/AIDS cases, with tens of thousands of new infections each year, the government said Thursday, but activists warned the problem was far greater.
"The result of estimates is that at the end of 2007, China will have about 700,000 HIV/AIDS cases, and 85,000 with AIDS," Health Minister Chen Zhu told a press conference in Beijing.
Chen said there were an estimated 50,000 new HIV infections in 2007, when 20,000 people died from AIDS, figures he described as a slightly better than previous years. [Full Text]
See also "Report: Sex Main Cause of HIV in China" from AP.
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The New York Times interviews Anne Lauvergeon, CEO of France's nuclear energy giant Areva, about the recent deal struck with China, the largest in the industry's history:
The agreement will bring both technology and much-needed energy to China, which has the world’s fastest-growing appetite for energy. But the deal could prove an even greater boon to Anne Lauvergeon, Areva’s chief executive, whose strategies — and optimism — have been questioned by critics.
The reasons for skepticism are clear. In recent years, nuclear-powered countries — like the United States, Germany and Japan — have refrained from building more plants, and countries like Italy and Poland, who had none, have refused to plunge into the nuclear age. But as today’s deal illustrates, the business of nuclear energy has come alive again, and it is people like Ms. Lauvergeon, her steely temper softened by a lively manner and a captivating laugh, that are bringing it back to life. [Full text]
[Image: Anne Lauvergeon, left, the chief executive of Areva, with Qian Zhimin, the president of China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group, from the New York Times]
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Chang'e I, China's recently launched lunar probe, has delivered it's first photo of the moon, providing Wen Jiabao opportunity to wax poetic about the future of China's space exploration efforts. From AFP:
"Chinese people's dream of flying to the moon for more than 1,000 years is beginning to materialise," Wen said in a speech carried by a government website."It showcases eloquently that the Chinese people have the will, the ambition and the capability to write new splendid chapters while ascending the science and technology summit."
China space officials have said repeatedly that they hope to put a man on the moon around 2020. However, top political leaders have so far not confirmed that this is an official national objective. [Full Text]
[Image: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao stands next to the first moon photo produced by Chang'e I, from China Daily]
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China, From Red to Green from Free More News on Vimeo.
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In the latest in the New York Times' series Choking on Growth, Howard French writes about the ways that local officials are undercutting national goals to reduce energy consumption:
Beijing has so fixated on the 20 percent goal that it has become the centerpiece of its overall strategy to reduce pollution in addition to consumption, as well as its main talking point in diplomatic negotiations to curb the output of gases that cause global warming. The target has elicited support among environmentalists in China and abroad. They regard it as ambitious given the explosion of heavy industry in China, which consumes vast amounts of electricity and, as it expands, makes the overall economy less energy efficient.
Even so, the drive has mostly sputtered. According to official estimates, which in China are often overly generous, the country saved only 1.23 percent of energy per unit of output last year. In the first half of 2007, the authorities claim to have achieved 2.4 percent, double the previous year’s rate. Energy experts say they believe that the savings will increase over time, but to meet the goal of a 20 percent reduction by 2010, the country will have to reduce energy per unit of output by 4 percent a year on average, so the chances of achieving it look increasingly slim. [Full text]
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Southern Metropolis Daily interviewed a tiger expert, Hu Huijian, on the recent Huanan (South China) tiger dispute. He demonstrated a way to fake the image of the Huanan tiger by taking photos of a paper tiger.
Meanwhile, since it has been discovered that the photos of the allegedly newly discovered Huanan tiger bear a striking resemblance to a popular New Year's poster, CDT has collected photos from netizens of the poster as well as Zhou Zhenglong's original Huanan tiger photos just released by Shaanxi Forestry Bureau.
Watch the slideshow below to see the various ways the Huanan tiger photos could have been faked: through photoshopping a New Year's poster, or by placing a paper cut-out in the woods.
Read the history of the dispute via CDT, and see below for examples of the creative ways Chinese netizens are having fun with this story:
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Forbes writes about the growing competition between China and Japan over iron ore:
Both nations have an acute need for the product. Indeed, it is China's enormous appetite for iron ore (about 500 million tons a year or more) that has been the major factor behind the recent enormous price increases and profits in the iron-ore industry around the world. Over the last three years alone, members of the iron-ore cartel--Brazil's CVRD (nyse: RIO - news - people ), Australian-based BHP Billiton (nyse: BBL - news - people ) and British-based Rio Tinto Group (nyse: RTP - news - people )--have raised iron-ore prices by, successively, 70%, 19%, 9.5% and for 2008, an estimated 50%.
Without China's voracious need for iron ore, such huge price increases would have been impossible. Although China has some iron-ore reserves, the quality and quantity of those reserves is lacking. Japan, like China, is also a net importer of iron ore for its steel industry, as Japan has no domestic reserves. [Full text]
Also related, see "China’s biggest steel group adds voice to global chorus against Rio-BHP deal" from The Times.
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The Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog takes an optimistic look at China's use of renewable energy:
Lisa Stiffler of the P-I writes in her Environment blog about a Worldwatch Institute study on energy development in China.
* China will likely achieve -- and may even exceed -- its target to obtain 15 percent of its energy from renewables by 2020.
* More than $50 billion was invested in renewable energy worldwide in 2006, and China is expected to invest over $10 billion in new renewables capacity in 2007, second only to Germany. [Full text]
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From Forbes.com:
Despite the extent of Internet censorship, gaps remain:
--A recent study found the system is less effective when more people are online, enabling banned terms to slip through.
--Other studies have reported the erratic nature of censorship--for example, at certain times, users in particular locations are able to browse the Internet with few restrictions.
--Costs and logistical difficulties also have limited the system--the government this year was forced to abandon a plan to mandate registration of individual users on blogs because of the complexity and likely failure of enforcing registration among China's 20 million bloggers. [Full Text]
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In the New York Review of Books, environmental activist Dai Qing writes about China's dire water shortage and a "looming environmental catastrophe":
On average, Beijing people have only three hundred cubic meters of water resources per capita, one eighth of the Chinese average—which is 2,200 cubic meters— and one thirtieth of the world average.
But during the Olympic Games, Beijing will enjoy an unprecedented supply of water. Special pipes will bring unpolluted water from the provinces to provide for the whole city, allowing people to enjoy potable water from their taps for the first time—but only for as long as the games last. Meanwhile, when the crowds watch and applaud the Olympic performances at the aquatic events, neither they nor the athletes will be aware that they are not really competing on the waters of Beijing's original Chaobai River. The "river" they will be using is an artificial creation made by damming the two ends of a long-dry riverbed and filling it with water pumped from deep underground. [Full text]
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"Landslides, Relocation of Residents Among Costly Drawbacks of Yangtze Project." From The Washington Post:
It was in this little village clinging to cliff sides over the Yangtze River that the environmental costs of China's Three Gorges Dam began to add up, a down payment on what experts predict will be billions of dollars and years of struggle to contain the damage.
The first sign was just a crack in the terraced earth, about four inches wide and 35 feet long, villagers said. But engineers found that the crevasse betrayed the danger of a massive landslide. They judged the risk so great that most of Miaohe's 250 farmers were temporarily evacuated. Fearing the hillside would never be safe again, the government started constructing a replacement village on a nearby plateau, blasted out of rock for increased stability. [Full Text]
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Responsible China critiques recent press coverage of the eco-city, Dongtan, being built off Shanghai:
Back then, way before ResponsibleChina.com was even a twinkle in my eye, Dongtan sounded too good to be true. An entire eco-city three-quarters the size of Manhattan built from scratch? Who’s building this? Who’s paying for it? What Chinese companies are involved? What are the obstacles and challenges to this endeavor? Have there been setbacks? Is the technology behind it feasible? How will construction affect the surrounding wetlands? Will local Chinese people be able to afford living there? Why build a new city when so many of China’s other cities need sustainable design? Has actual progress been made? (Apparently, by 2030 there will be more than 500,000 people living in Dongtan. Has anyone moved in, yet?)
Legitimate questions, I think, that demand thorough answers. [Full text]
[Image via Arup]
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From AP:
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will commit $50 million to expand HIV prevention efforts in China, in partnership with the Chinese government and non-governmental organizations.
The foundation said late Tuesday the funding will increase access to HIV prevention programs targeting those most vulnerable to infection, including injection drug users, sex workers, and men who have sex with men. [Full text]
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That's Beijing has a feature on the new Chnese virtual worlds that are trying to compete with Second Life:
If Second Life is populated by only the occasional virtual Chinatown, the Beijing-born HiPiHi World turns the whole metaverse Chinese. With capital investment over USD 3 million and interest from foreign companies like Intel and Google, the software is already stirring buzz as Second Life’s main competitor and potentially as China’s biggest foray into “Web 3.0.” And though it counts thousands of beta users, the virtual world hasn’t even officially opened yet (a public test is scheduled for later this year).
Just don’t call HiPiHi a game, at least not when talking to founder and CEO Hui Xu. The 39-year-old Internet entrepreneur likes to point to companies like IBM and Reuters, which have set up offices in Second Life, as well as governments like the Maldives, which maintains a virtual embassy there. “Is it possible for HiPiHi, which already has 30,000 users, to attract attention from the media, commercial institutions and even governments around the world,” he asks, “if it is merely a game?”
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From Xinhua, via China.org.cn:
The world's highest mobile phone base station tested successfully on Tuesday on Mount Qomolangma, also known as Mount Everest, at an altitude of 6,500 meters.The station, run by China Mobile, the largest mobile phone service provider in China, will provide services for mountaineers on the world's highest peak and the torch relay for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
At 1 p.m. on Tuesday, a worker called the mobile phone of Wang Jianzhou, general manager of China Mobile, via the station and the conversation was clear, said a company spokesman.
He said the station's construction was "incredibly difficult" as the oxygen level at the site was only 38 percent of that at ground level. [Full Text]
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"The Chinese search engine's Baike online encyclopedia blocks politically sensitive entries; some say it condones plagiarism and copyright abuse." From The Business Week:
Baidu (BIDU) is best known as the leading Internet search engine in China, where it's far ahead of Silicon Valley's Google (GOOG). But Baidu, based in Beijing, also provides a number of other Net services, including an online Chinese-language encyclopedia that has recently become the most popular in mainland China. The story of how Baidu came to dominate the country's online encyclopedia business helps explain its success in search, raises questions about political expediency and plagiarism, and highlights the difficulties facing Western companies in China.
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From Christian Science Monitor:
The neutral colors, anodyne landscape paintings, and diplomas ranged on the windowsill make Tian Guoyan's office much like a psychological counselor's clinic anywhere else in the world.
But this is China, where only 20 years ago, recalls Canadian psychiatrist Michael Phillips, his local colleagues hid their work from neighbors who feared that mental illness was infectious, and thought that such doctors would have caught it from their patients.
Ms. Tian is pioneering a new and rapidly growing profession in China, as ever more psychotherapists and counselors hang out their shingles with names such as "Happiness Heaven" or "Mood Manager." But they cannot hope to keep up with demand, they say, in a turbulent society where a typhoon of change has torn through ordinary people's lives. [Full Text]
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This time Laura Ling talks about China's great firewall and reports that "an information battle is taking place between China's 120 million Internet users and the Chinese government's web censors." Ling also interviewed Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor and Director of The China Internet Project at the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California at Berkeley and the founder of CDT, who sees the new internet media - blogging - as a revolution for China. [Click to see the original video]
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From International Water Power and Dam Construction:
Construction work has taken another step forward for the 12.6GW Xiluodu hydropower scheme on the Jianshajiang river, in China, after the previous set back due to the country’s environmental agency acting on a number of schemes.
Official media in China report that work on damming the Jianshajiang has commenced. Work on the project had started in late 2005 but it suffered delays due to pressure from the State Environmental Protection Administration (Sepa).
Xiluodu is located in Yunnan province, on a tributary of the Yangtze, and is to supply power locally as well as to Sichuan. [Full Text]
Read also: Key step made in 2nd largest hydropower project.
[Image source: China.org.cn]
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The Huanan Tiger dispute continues, as the Shaanxi Forestry Bureau is pushing for a genetic verification of the tiger. This is in response to the academic and legal battles over the credibility of the photos and the existence of the once extinct animals in the region, via Xin Yusi BBS:
At a 12 October press conference in Xian, Zhou Zhenglong, a former hunter, told a rapt audience of his quest to photograph the beast, crawling to within 20 meters of one and snapping 71 images. When the camera's flash went off, the tiger roared and disappeared, he said.
Skeptics, citing factors such as the tiger's tame-looking expression and unreal coat color--as well as the fact that the two photos portray exactly the same tiger but differently positioned foliage-- think it's more likely that someone planted a cardboard tiger in the bushes. Fu Dezhi, a botanist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, adds that the plants are not to scale in relation to the tiger. Zhou, who was paid 20,000 yuan ($2666) for the images, says, "I guarantee with my head that the photographs are authentic."
The Shaanxi Forestry Bureau is pushing ahead with plans for a thorough survey and a tiger reserve. "It's tremendously exciting news, if it can be substantiated," says tiger expert Gary Koehler of Washington state's Department of Fish and Wildlife (Science, 7 September, p. 1312). But first, "they need to look for hair snags or scat" for genetic verification. [Full Text]
[Image: The controversial photo taken by Zhou Zhenglong]
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From RFA Unplugged blog:
Yahoo’s chief executive Jerry Yang and executive vice president Michael Callahan faced a House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing in Washington yesterday over providing misleading information to Congress last year as part of an investigation into the company’s role in disclosing former journalist and cyberdissident Shi Tao’s identity to Chinese authorities.
Shi Tao was arrested in November 2004 after sending a government internal document delivered to his publication to several foreign websites. The document was issued as a warning to journalists of the possible social destabilisation and risks posed by returning dissidents on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and requested that they not report on the occasion. [Full Text]
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Translated by CDT from the Beijing Times:
Rumors have it that Beijingers will probably soon drink a mixture of first-hand tap water with recycled water. Yesterday, Beijing Water Bureau's deputy director Cheng Jing (程静) dismissed the rumors, which potentially could have created panic. "Beijing's water recycling technology has reached world class standards," the official said. "We may not have found what toxic substances are in recycled water, so we cannot just yet mix recycled water into the tap water."
The water official also clarified Singapore's practice of injecting 5-10% of recycled water into their drinking water, which is done by running the recycled water through its original water system and then mixing with tap water. In Beijing, however, recycled water has been used in agriculture, industry, landscaping or other purposes. The water bureau has found no harm in using the water in irrigating farmland. The bureau official reiterates that recycled water will still be primarily used in non-drinking sectors. [Full Text in Chinese]
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Translated by CDT from Xin Kuai Bao (新快报):
A foreign affairs spokesperson for the National Space Administration (国家航天局) said that China is going to launch twin Mars explorers on a Russian-made rocket in 2009. The twin crafts will be developed and produced by China and Russia. China's will do the same job as its moon mission, orbiting Mars for imaging purposes. The Russian one will land on Mars.
This project will further build up China's capabilities in deep space exploration, monitoring and data collection. The mission is hundreds of times the distance of the moon plan and will mean another giant step for China's space initiatives. [Full Text in Chinese]
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Salon's How the World Works blog writes about Michael Zhao's eDump documentary:
A lifetime of blog posts decrying the environmental toll of high-tech industrial production does not begin to approach the impact of Michael Zhao's 20-minute documentary on the processing of e-waste in Guiyu, China. The images are extraordinary and unforgettable. The land, air, and water of Guiyu, a town in Guangdong province that imports a million tons of e-waste a year, are polluted beyond redemption. There are points where Zhao has to stop filming because he cannot physically stand the fumes -- the air "permeated with the smell of baked plastics and burnt circuitry."
Responsibility for the debacle that is Guiyu rests on many Chinese shoulders, from local officials in China who profit off a toxic disaster zone to the central government officials powerless to enforce their own environmental decrees. But the United States cannot escape its own share of shame. [Full text]
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From BBC News:
China is planning to launch its own space station in 2020, according to reports, in the latest sign of the country's ambitions in space.Scientists are on track to send "a small-scale 20-ton space workshop" into the Earth's orbit, rocket designer Long Lehao told state media.
If successful, it would be the first such station run by a single country.
The announcement follows the launch of its first Moon probe last month, and a successful manned space flight in 2003. [Full Text]
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This film took a very long time (more than a year) to produce. And it took not only a great deal of hard work, but also a lot of sadness to overcome to struggle to the finish line (for now). First I produced a multimedia package on this issue, available at michaelzhao.net/eDump. Then my colleagues at Asia Society in New York put me in front of the camera to talk about e-waste and my project. Their short video clip (via Youtube here) attracted a quarter million hits in a month.
I've always wanted to reproduce this project into a straight documentary, much longer than most Youtube videos of course. But the multimedia package took me nine months to finish and made me nearly sick of watching all the footage in the Final Cut Pro windows over and over again. Thus, I paused for a couple of months. But recently, I finally pulled my act together again and finished this 20-minute film, my first such major work.
Here is a 3.5-minute preview of the film. I hope that people outside China won't just be concerned about the country's unsafe pet food, toys and other cheap products. The full film is available at: michaelzhao.net.
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From AP:
Chinese and Swiss scientists said Friday the Yangtze River is less polluted than expected, but only because the vast amounts of water dilute farm and industrial waste that still pose a serious threat to animals and plants.Environmentalists warned the findings should not be seen as a clean bill of health for the Yangtze, where water quality has continually deteriorated. Because of its large size, the 3,900-mile-long Yangtze cannot be compared to other rivers, they said.
Around 25 billion tons of waste is poured every year into the Yangtze, the world's third-largest river, said a joint Chinese-Swiss expedition that analyzed the river's water quality. [Full Text]
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From The Dissent Magazine:
China's economy is booming like never before and its social fabric is being ripped apart and knit together in novel ways. State-of-the-art sports stadiums, a renovated airport terminal, and a new financial district have been built or are under construction in pre-Olympic Beijing, where there's even been talk of seeding rain clouds to limit pollution.
And, not to be outdone by its rival to the north, Shanghai is preparing to host the 2010 World Expo, an event that will have decidedly twenty-first-century elements. Upon arrival, visitors will be rocketed from airport to WiFi-wired exhibition halls via magnetic-levitation trains that run through a city that now has more skyscrapers than Manhattan. [Full Text]
[Image source: dissentmagazine.org]
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From T-Salon blog:
This year's Chinese Blogger Conference will take place in Beijing as well as virtually on the internet this coming weekend.
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“Beijing makes plans for new rockets, island spaceport, barge transport," from MSNBC.com
For its first week in space, China's lunar orbiter circled Earth in elongated orbits with ever-increasing high points. Like a child in a swing pumping both legs to fly higher, the Chang'e spacecraft repeatedly fired its small thrusters to test its steering before the big jump all the way to the moon.
On Wednesday, the jump began. Between now and Nov. 5, any aiming or propulsion errors could be catastrophic. The true test of China's aspirations beyond Earth orbit is well under way. [Full Text]
[Image source: An artist's interpretation of the China's Chang'e 1 lunar orbiter slated for launch in 2007, msnbc.com]
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The Economist writes that the reactivation of a long dormant but potentially deadly landslide is but one of a number of hazards brought about by the Three Gorges Dam:
Officials have long stressed the dam's benefits: a reduction (some say exaggerated) in flooding downstream; the generation of (very expensive) carbon-free power; and the creation of a 660km-long, navigation-friendly reservoir. The official press has largely ignored the many criticisms of the dam. The authorities have rapidly and sometimes brutally crushed protests by some of the more than 1.2m people moved from the reservoir area, and have often poorly compensated them. Allegations abound of resettlement funds lining officials' pockets.
But in the past few months signs have emerged that, in parts of the government at least, the resolute optimism is wavering. China's state-run news agency, Xinhua, was a few days late in reporting Miaohe's problem. When it did, it dutifully cited the official reassurance that there was little imminent risk of the slope's collapse. But it later quoted an official as saying the rise and fall of the reservoir's water level (it was lowered by 11 metres before the flood season began in the summer) had probably caused the tremble—just as experts had forewarned. Xinhua failed to report, however, that the risks will mount. [Full text]
[Image: Three Gorges Dam, via the Economist]
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The Guardian writes about the proposed virtual Beijing Cyber Recreation District:
Anyone who still thinks that virtual worlds such as MindArk's Entropia Universe or Second Life are the plaything of geeks should look at what is happening in China. It is simply mind-boggling and, if it all comes off, has awesome implications for western economies. I have written before about how the Beijing municipality in partnership with private capital (and with help from MindArk of Sweden) is planning a virtual world for around 150m avatars, of which 7m could be online at the same time. This is so far above the capability of the much-hyped Second Life, which rarely has more than 50,000 online concurrently, that I had some difficulty in believing it.
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Amid reports of poisonous toys and tainted food products, the New York Times has a lengthy report on unregulated and often deadly drugs entering the world market from China:
Pharmaceutical ingredients exported from China are often made by chemical companies that are neither certified nor inspected by Chinese drug regulators, The New York Times has found.
Because the chemical companies are not required to meet even minimal drug-manufacturing standards, there is little to stop them from exporting unapproved, adulterated or counterfeit ingredients. The substandard formulations made from those ingredients often end up in pharmacies in developing countries and for sale on the Internet, where more Americans are turning for cheap medicine. [Full text]
The story page includes a video segment.
[Image: At least 82 Chinese companies at a Milan trade show, none of them certified, said they made pharmaceutical ingredients, via NYTimes.com]
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Please click to watch this four-part BBC series: China from the Inside, from 2006, via video.google.com:
＊ Power and the People
＊ Women of the Country
＊ Shifting Nature
＊ Freedom and Justice
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Kaiser Kuo and Rebecca MacKinnon comment on the news that Facebook plans to launch a Chinese site later this year. From Ogilvy China Digital Watch:
A report on China-cbn.com (the website of Diyi Caijing Ribao, in Chinese) cites an “industry insider” who says that Facebook plans to release additional language interfaces and intends to enter the China market as early as December this year. The paper claims that Facebook has given up its initial plan to set up its own China-based site like MySpace has done with MySpace.cn, but will instead acquire an existing SNS in China. Who do you suppose that could be? [Full text]
See also Rebecca's post "Facebook goes to China... will it censor too?"
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“What happens when an authoritarian government and thousands of activists go head-to-head at the Olympics? China is about to find out.“ From Foreign Policy:
You can always count on the Olympic Games to provide drama. Next year’s games in Beijing will be no different; they too will produce powerful stories and riveting television. But this time the images will not just be athletes overcoming the odds or breaking records. They will also focus on the clashes between the Chinese police and the activists who will arrive from all around the world. The causes that motivate their activism range from human rights to global warming, from Darfur to Tibet, from Christianity to Falun Gong. The clashes outside the stadiums are likely to be more intense and spectacular than the sports competitions taking place inside. And the showdown will be captured as much by the videocameras in the cell phones of protesters and spectators as any news agencies’ camera crews. In fact, the Beijing Olympics will not just offer another opportunity to test the limits of human athletic performance; it will also test the limits of a centralized police state’s ability to confront a nebulous swarm of foreign activists armed with BlackBerries. A governmental bureaucracy organized according to 20th-century principles will meet 21st-century global politics. Lenin meets YouTube.
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China is taking action against the recent discoveries of tainted food and other exports. From the New York Times:
The Chinese government said today that it had arrested 774 people over the past two months as part of a nationwide crackdown on the production and sale of tainted food, drugs and agricultural products.
Government regulators hailed the arrests as a major step forward for food and drug safety, and said the “criminal suspects” were detained during nationwide inspections of thousands of restaurants, food and drug production facilities and wholesale food markets.
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An Israeli design firm has won an award for proposing the use of "Agro-Housing" to counter the effects of urbanization in China, and their submission will be built in Wuhan. Agro-Housing combines living space with a greenhouse in urban apartment buildings so residents can grow their own food. From Dwell Blog:
China has a population of well over a billion, almost half of whom live in densely packed urban areas. All of those people need fresh food to eat, and would probably also prefer to breathe somewhat clean air. But those kinds of numbers prove a mind-numbing puzzle for urban planners everywhere. One solution is the idea of Agro-Housing, or incorporating greenhouses within high-rise housing projects, as proposed by the Isreali firm Knafo Klimor Architects...
The interesting design idea was created in response to the 2nd International Architecture Competition for Sustainable Housing. Firms were asked to put forward solutions to city living in one of three locations: Brazil, China, and the UK. Knafo Klimor won the prize for the China competition, and as a result, their submission is being built in the city of Wuhan. [Full text]
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From Wall Street Journal:
Fifty years after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world's first man-made satellite, and jolted the U.S. into a race for space, China is ramping up a new space contest -- with an eye on rival Japan.Tomorrow evening, the China National Space Administration is scheduled to fire a "Long March" rocket from a launch site in the southwestern province of Sichuan. If all goes well, it will propel a satellite into lunar orbit, an important step toward China's goal of beating Japan to become the first Asian nation to put a man on the moon. [Full Text]
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From The Wired Magazine:
I didn't know I was a surveillance target until the day I walked into a hotel in China's Fujian province. I was pushing past half a dozen workmen changing lightbulbs in the glum but busy lobby when a uniformed man stepped in front of me. Blue jacket, creased trousers, braided epaulets, peaked cap: government security officer. Politely, he asked whether I would mind answering a few questions. He stood erect, with the manicured swagger of a corporate CEO. Next to him, a gangly plainclothes colleague gave me a so-you-thought-we-wouldn't-catch-you look.
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"Internal forces, technological change and problematic policies spur growing inequality." From YaleGlobal:
Economic inequality is on the rise around the world, and many analysts point their fingers at globalization. Are they right?
Economic inequality has even hit Asia, a region long characterized by relatively low inequality. A report from the Asian Development Bank states that economic inequality now nears the levels of Latin America, a region long characterized by high inequality.
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CDT's nomination for the strangest news (so far at least) to come out of the on-going 17th Party Congress. Via China Daily:
Chinese taikonauts (astronauts) may start a branch of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in space, said the country's first taikonaut Yang Liwei.
China now has a 14-strong astronaut team. The team members, including Yang himself, are all CPC members.
"If China has its own space station, the taikonauts on mission will carry out the regular activities of a CPC branch in space in the way we do on earth, such as learning the Party's policies and exchanging opinions on the Party's decisions," said Yang, a delegate to the on-going CPC national congress in Beijing. [Full Text]
One wonders how this announcement squares with recent reports that China wants to join the International Space Station.
[Image from the WIRED Science blog]
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"Made in China" may be running a reputation deficit around the world, but not back home in Beijing, which needs tons of steel to build stadiums and other infrastructure projects. Translated by CDT from China Business News:
A conservative estimate puts the total demand for steel in the pre-Olympics infrastructure build-up at 3 million tons. That includes 110,000 tons for the National Stadium, or the "Bird's Nest," alone. And 43,000 tons will have to be super premium steel types that China had never produced, because these extra-robust steel structures will be propping up tens of thousands of tons of weight, which in scientific terms means 460 mega-pascal. And the awe-inspiring nest-shaped steel super-twigs, 46,000 tons in total, will rest on 24 pieces of this specially-made steel.
In a March 2005 special meeting in Beijing, the city authorities summoned up seven major Chinese steel makers, including Baosteel, the Capital Steel Group, Anshan Steel, Wuhan Steel and Wuyang Steel (舞阳钢铁公司). The purpose of the meeting was to find out who could make the Olympic-steel, and more important, to make sure that all steel for the Games comes from home, not a kilo from imports.
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From Financial Times:
The stench filling the air outside the Good Breeding pig farm in an otherwise bucolic mid-autumn day on Beijing’s rural outskirts is the best news Li Yongqiang has had for nearly a year.
After cutting production in 2006 because of rising feed costs and low pork prices, Mr Li late last year lost another one-sixth of his pigs in an outbreak of the deadly “blue ear” disease . Mr Li’s problems were replicated on tens of thousands of small farms throughout China, causing a national shortage of pork and other staple foods and pushing inflation to an 11-year high of 6.5 per cent in August. [Full Text]
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Images and story from Southern Metropolis Daily, via Sina, translated by CDT:
Recently, a special "intelligent" virus has emerged from the Chinese Internet. This Win32/KillDPT virus can decide to suspend the operating system or create intrusive damage based on different languages used on the computer, to ensure the use of the simplified Chinese character system. Some bloggers call it "the patriotic virus."
According to a Beijing anti-virus center, the virus will first read the registry keys and judge the operating system type. If it is a simplified Chinese operating system, the virus will automatically withdraw from the operation and have no effect on the computer. If it uses Japanese or Indonesian language operating systems, the the virus will destroy the hard disk by filling the computer with garbage data and restarting the system. The result is the computer becomes completely paralyzed. If it is an English system, the sentence, "Your luck's so good!” will pop up on the screen (This is obvious Chinglish; the literal translation should be "you'll be very lucky".)
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The Washington Post looks at how the government's failure to be transparent about pollution figures in Beijing is worrying Olympics planners:
Beijing officials preparing for the Games point proudly to a state-of-the-art control room that measures pollutants at 27 monitoring stations around the city. They say they are adding subway lines and have moved many factories out of town. And in a four-day experiment in August that could be a model for action during the Games, officials eliminated more than a million cars from the city's streets by ordering motorists with odd- and even-numbered license plates to drive on alternate days.
But critics point to evidence of their own: Beijing does not regularly measure or evaluate some serious pollutants, including ozone and some types of fine particulate matter that can easily be inhaled deep into the lungs. Meanwhile, they have refused to publicly release figures on the amount of pollutants at any given location, such as the Olympic Village or Tiananmen Square, preferring to stick with a citywide average. [Full text]
On a related topic, see CDT's translation, "China to Start Pollutant Sources Census".
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From Xinhua:
A senior Chinese official said here Tuesday that researchers and technicians are making final preparations for the launch of the country's first moon orbiter, Chang'e I, at the end of October.Zhang Qingwei, minister in charge of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND), who is attending the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), said in an interview with Xinhua.
Zhang said his team has nearly finished pre-launch tests on the rocket and orbiter, which have been transported to the launch site. [Full Text]
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Translated by CDT from the Beijing News:
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has inked a new regulation that kicks off a nationwide census on sources of pollution, which will be conducted once every 10 years.
The surveying aims to find out the quantity, sectors and regional distribution of various types of pollutant sources, their volumes of emissions, destinations and cleanup facilities, and treatment status. These statistics are expected to provide the groundwork for decision-making on curbing pollution and industry restructuring and for the purpose of measuring the target of a 10% reduction of major pollutants by the end of the 11th Five-year Plan.
The standard point of time for each survey will be December 31 of the conducting year. Subjects of inspections are not supposed to delay, falsify or cover up reporting. Surveyors are not supposed to falsify or tamper with the records, neither should they impose or suggest falsified documents from the inspected parties. [Full Text in Chinese]
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Translated by CDT from Global Character (环球人物) magazine:
While many countries are either working on or planning a moon landing, China's first moon explorer, code-named Chang'e I, is about to launch, expected at year's end. With the launch spectator tickets running as high as 1,000 yuan, there seems to be a shortage of supply.
More than 600 years ago, a Ming-dynasty official named Wan Hu (万户) bundled himself around a chair, which was strapped with 47 self-made "rockets." He fired himself into the sky, aspiring for a successful flight, only to end in a hard landing that killed himself, in human's first attempt to "fly". One of the craters on the moon was named after him in the 1970s.
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Xinjiang, after becoming the biggest base for China's oil and gas supply, is ready for the development of the world's largest National Park, from China Daily:
Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has planned to build the world's largest national park by integrating the scattered neighboring tourist resorts into a whole...
Kanas geological park, almost 1,000 kilometers north of Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, boasts a range of landscapes, including the Kanas Lake, China's deepest alpine lake, snow-capped mountains and grassland.
The park has attracted more and more tourists since it opened in the 1980s. It received 917,000 tourists in the first 10 months this year, a 32 percent growth over the same period of last year, and the figure is expected to exceed one million by the end of this year. [Full Text]
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Third of the New York Times's environmental series this year, and multimedia package along with this installment:
Lake Tai, the center of China’s ancient “land of fish and rice,” succumbed this year to floods of industrial and agricultural waste.The outbreak confirmed the claims of a crusading peasant, Wu Lihong, who protested for more than a decade that the region’s thriving chemical industry, and its powerful friends in the local government, were destroying one of China’s ecological treasures.
Mr. Wu, however, bore silent witness. Shortly before the algae crisis erupted in May, the authorities here in his hometown arrested him. In mid-August, with a fetid smell still wafting off the lake, a local court sentenced him to three years on an alchemy of charges that smacked of official retribution. [Full Text]
Video here, slide show here, and package landing page here.
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Refurbished tires may be another "made in China" scare story, but with limited, domestic significance. Translated from China Quality 5,000-km Patrol magazine (中国质量万里行) by CDT:
Mr. Liu, an Urumqi cargo truck driver, happened to see a mini-truck on the side of a road that was shipping six or seven tires, all looking new. With four tires worn out on his truck, Liu was just about to buy some new ones. He went up to the little truck and asked about the prices. Eight hundred yuan each, a young guy said. Thinking there shouldn't be a problem after a peek at the nicely packaged tires, Liu bargained a bit and got four for 2,800 yuan.
But when he was changing the "new" tires at an auto shop he often visits while having a lunch break, the shop owner told him the bad news: the tires were bad, even for refurbished ones. Cotton fillings were found lining the tires. Liu hailed a taxi to return to where he bought the tires, only to find that nobody was there any more.
Liu is but one of many unwitting victims of an industry that has boomed in recent years in Xinjiang, where the number of retired tires tops China's annual stock of 120 million a year. Xinjiang is the largest province in the country by size and is known for its harsh desert terrain.
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"Better City, Better Life" is the theme for Shanghai Expo 2010. But like almost every other Chinese city, Shanghai suffers from serious air pollution. From Shanghaiist blog:
People, we live in the world's second least green and livable city. [Full Text]
