Danwei's Must-Read China News

Poisonous dairy products still for sale in China?

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:36:20 +0800

David Bandurski at the China Media Project:

[F]acts lurking in reports from a handful of Chinese newspapers in recent days beg serious questions about the government's handling of a scandal China's leaders want very much to put behind them.

Specifically, there are indications that dairy companies and retailers are now employing aggressive sales promotion campaigns to offload products manufactured in the months before the scandal came to light -- products that could be harmful despite government reassurances.

A black jail in a Beijing hotel

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:31:25 +0800

Black and White Cat translates blog posts by Xu Zhiyong about a 'black jail' in a Beijing hotel where petitioners are held against their will, with photos of the hotel.

Relaxed rules for foreign journalists to stay?

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 08:38:44 +0800

The Kyodo News is reporting a story that no one else has published:

China has decided to continue allowing foreign reporters to interview anyone who consents after the current relaxed media rules expire next Friday, a Chinese source knowledgeable about the situation has said.

China implemented temporary media rules in January 2007 as part of its Olympics pledge to give international media complete freedom during the Summer Games, which were held in August.

China and Japan get ivory from South Africa

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:48:40 +0800

Under a special exemption for a one-off deal, South Africa will sell 51 tons of ivory to China and Japan:

Ivory trade was banned globally in 1989, but reviving elephant populations allowed African countries to make a one-time sale a decade later to Japan, the only country which had previously won the right to import. In July, the convention said that China should also be allowed to bid for the ivory at auction later this year as it had dramatically improved its enforcement of ivory rules....

Five years ago, the Chinese government confessed to the convention that it had lost track of 121 tons of ivory -- the equivalent to the tusks from 11,000 dead elephants -- between 1991 and 2002 and indicated that it probably was sold on illegal markets.

But since then Beijing has tightened its surveillance. Chinese law provides for capital punishment and life imprisonment for smugglers.

An appetite for Florida turtles

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 09:16:45 +0800

There are no restrictions on turtle harvesting in the state of Florida, reports the St. Petersburg Times, and local populations are being ravaged by over-harvesting:

A rising demand in China for turtles for food and medicine has led to the round-up of thousands of turtles from Florida's lakes, ponds and canals.

Exporters are shipping up to 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week out of Tampa International Airport, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. A Fort Lauderdale seafood company is buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. They're worth about $2 a pound to the harvesters.

Parents journey to Beijing to petition about their lost children

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:28:31 +0800

Forty parents of missing children traveled to Beijing to petition the goverment for help. At Global Voices Online, Oiwan Lam translates a first-person account of the obstacles they faced during their encounters with CCTV, the Beijing police, and officials from their hometowns sent to take them back home.

Claptrap written purely to titillate

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 09:51:39 +0800

Paper Republic translates a Xinmin Weekly article on Yan Lianke's newest novel, Elegy and Academe, which made a splash upon publication because of a portrayal of Tsinghua and Peking Universities that some scholars have accused of being slanderous.

Melamine standards set

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 09:10:01 +0800

The Chinese Health Ministry has announced standards for the amount of melamine that is acceptable in dairy products, reports Edward Wong at the IHT:

When asked what the previous standards were, the officials declined to give an answer and implied that there had been no limits before the milk scandal erupted last month.

Wang Xuening, the deputy chief of the ministry's health inspection and supervision department, said the new limits act as guidance for how much unintentional seepage of melamine into food can be permitted by inspectors.

People who purposefully add melamine to food will be prosecuted, he said.

Mine explosion cover-up blown open

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 14:18:16 +0800

A Xinhua report exploring the cover-up of a July mine accident has hit web portals throughout China, the China Media Project says:

According to the Xinhua release, officials and local mine bosses in Hebei's Yu County worked together to suppress news of the explosion, and secretly buried the bodies of the dead in a neighboring county.

The news is the second national embarrassment for officials in Hebei this fall, after reports last month revealed that local officials in the province covered up problems in July with milk powder manufactured by Shijiazhuang-based Sanlu Group, the company at the center of China's ongoing dairy scandal.

No such thing as 'made in China'

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:54:17 +0800

Alice Xin Liu writes for the Guardian's "Comment is free" section about the "gawk factor" of Chinese youth culture.

Life inside China's pop echo-chamber

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:40:30 +0800

At Outdustry, Ed Peto examines the online music phenomenon in China:

What has resulted is a kind of echo-chamber effect, in which only low common denominator, crowd approved pop music is fed back into the network through these curated bottlenecks. The priority for the Chinese labels is to please the network and make it into these bottlenecks, not push musical boundaries forward, as failure to make it into these top strata of recognition brings with it a hefty price. As one of the only other major sources of music industry income, brands focus the bulk of their sponsorship monies on the highly visible hit artists, compounding the relatively anonymous non-chartees to further suffering.

White Rabbit resumes production

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:35:43 +0800

The famous candy, which was pulled from shelves during the melamine milk scandal, is back in action after securing a safe supply of milk powder, the Guardian reports.

Liuzhou photos

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:26:10 +0800

Photos from Liuzhou by Michael of the blog ExpatriateGames.wordpress.com.

Dealers, pimps and outdoor dining in Beijing

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:57:17 +0800

Eye of Modok lists the top ten signs that the Beijing Olympics are really over.

Tourism plan for Beichuan quake zone

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:54:44 +0800

From The China Daily:

Beichuan, one of the counties in Sichuan province most devastated by the May 12 earthquake, has formulated an ambitious 19.7 billion yuan ($2.89 billion) tourism restoration plan, local officials said.

A death on train 1291

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:18:55 +0800

A disruptive passenger is taped to his seat and later dies. ESWN translates a news article that reports some eyewitness accounts.

China cancels military contact with U.S.

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:14:39 +0800

In reaction to the announcement of a US$6.5 billion arms deal with Taiwan, China has notified the US it will not be participating in certain military and diplomatic activities. From the AP:

The Chinese action will not stop the country's participation with the United States in international efforts over Iran's and North Korea's nuclear programs, U.S. officials said.

But it does include the cancellation of an upcoming U.S. visit by a senior Chinese general, other similar visits, port calls by naval vessels and the indefinite postponement of meetings on stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction, the officials said.

China mulls land privatization

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:47:43 +0800

China Worker discusses the implications of a proposal by Hu Jintao to allow farmers to transfer land rights:

Advised by liberal economic theorists, the leadership are portraying the new policy of 'transfer' rights (privatisation) as a means to empower the lowly peasant and end the above named abuses. Initially, it is quite possible that many peasants will welcome this policy, as the (good) reception for Hu Jintao in Xiaogang village would suggest. This is more likely if the government package their policy to appear as if they are giving the land to those who farm it. In reality, however, this policy would be an unmitigated disaster for the majority of the rural population, who are the biggest losers also under the present situation.

MIT report on China's energy sector

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:27:48 +0800

An investigation written up in the paper Greener Plants, Grayer Skies? A report from the front lines of China's energy sector suggests that outmoded technology and poor government regulation are not to blame for China's air pollution woes:

After detailed survey and field research involving dozens of managers at 85 power plants across 14 Chinese provinces, Steinfeld and his co-authors, Richard Lester and Edward Cunningham, found that in fact most of the new plants have been built to very high technical standards, using some of the most modern technologies available. The problem has to do with the way that energy infrastructure is being operated and the types of coals being burned.

Bid to save world's rarest turtles fails

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:22:41 +0800

An attempt to mate two of the last remaining Yangtze giant soft-shell turtles has failed, reports the Telegraph:

The pair of geriatric turtles are the only remaining Yangtze giant soft-shell turtles, or Rafetus Swinhoei. The existence of another male in Hoan Kiem Lake in the centre of Hanoi is thought to be merely a legend, while a fourth turtle, found in the wilds of North Vietnam in 2007, is now dead.