Jacki Chan: freedom not beneficial for China

Taken from the AP story

HONG KONG - Action star Jackie Chan 's comments wondering whether Chinese people "need to be controlled" have drawn sharp rebuke in his native Hong Kong and in Taiwan .

Chan told a business forum in the southern Chinese province of Hainan that a free society may not be beneficial for China 's authoritarian mainland.

"I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not," Chan said Saturday. "I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want."

He went on to say that freedoms in Hong Kong and Taiwan made those societies "chaotic."

Chan's comments drew applause from a predominantly Chinese audience of business leaders, but did not sit well with lawmakers in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

"He's insulted the Chinese people. Chinese people aren't pets," Hong Kong pro-democracy legislator Leung Kwok-hung told The Associated Press. "Chinese society needs a democratic system to protect human rights and rule of law."

Another lawmaker, Albert Ho, called the comments "racist," adding: "People around the world are running their own countries. Why can't Chinese do the same?"

Former British colony Hong Kong enjoys Western-style civil liberties and some democratic elections under Chinese rule. Half of its 60-member legislature is elected, with the other half picked by special interest groups. But Hong Kong's leader is chosen by a panel stacked with Beijing loyalists.

In democratically self-ruled Taiwan, which split from mainland China during a civil war in 1949, legislator Huang Wei-che said Chan himself "has enjoyed freedom and democracy and has reaped the economic benefits of capitalism. But he has yet to grasp the true meaning of freedom and democracy."

Chan's comments were reported by news outlets in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but were ignored by the mainland Chinese press.

Although Chan was a fierce critic of the brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in June 1989, which killed at least hundreds, he has not publicly criticized China's government in recent years and is immensely popular on the mainland.

He performed during the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics and took part in the Olympic torch relay .

Chan also is vice chairman of the China Film Association, a key industry group.

Swat the mosquitos computer game

Here in Tianjin, we are pestered nine months a year with mosquitoes. They sneak in through the gaps in our windows, the gaps in the door jams that lead to the outside, the gaps in the drains. They come from every direction. You may not notice them until night. But trust that just as you lay you down to sleep, pray the lord your skin to keep. The mosquitoes will getcha if you don't watch out!

Somehow they're faster here than in America. They're cunning and conniving and seem to elude even our attempts with electric fly swatters that are like giant porch lamps attracting them with light only to electrocute their exoskeletons.

So if you can't swat them in reality, swat them virtually. Try this game! You are the giant fly swatter and you must swat the skeeters, winning only a larger swarm of them when you swat one.

Try it! See how many mosquitoes you can swat here!

Only in China: Weddings account for 10% of GDP

How good was business at last week's Beijing Wedding Expo?

The ATM machines ran out of money.

"I didn't bring enough cash," lamented 26-year-old Wang Lin, attempting to console his fiancee, Zhao Yue, as they waited in line at one of the few machines that was still operating.

"I never thought we'd make so many spur-of-the-moment decisions," said Wang, an IT worker, as he and Zhao leafed through brochures for gifts, photo albums, clothing, banquets and honeymoons.

They were not alone. An estimated 34,000 couples mobbed the Expo over three days. They spent an estimated $29 million, 30 percent more than last year, as more than 1,000 merchants promoted everything from Lincoln Limousines to tours of France.

Weddings have always been big business in China, and this year is no exception.

More than 10 million people marry annually in China. Expenditures totaled $220 billion, or 13.36 percent of GDP, in 2006, the last year for which statistics are available, according to the Ministry of Commerce and the China Wedding Industry Investigation and Research Center.

Read the rest of the story here

Tianjin makes the front page of New York Times!

TIANJIN, China — Chinese leaders have adopted a plan aimed at turning the country into one of the leading producers of hybrid and all-electric vehicles within three years, and making it the world leader in electric cars and buses after that.

The goal, which radiates from the very top of the Chinese government, suggests that Detroit’s Big Three, already struggling to stay alive, will face even stiffer foreign competition on the next field of automotive technology than they do today.

“China is well positioned to lead in this,” said David Tulauskas, director of China government policy at General Motors.

Read the rest HERE.

Hello, Goodbye relationship with Youtube.com

After it was restored for one day, Youtube.com is again blocked in China.

The most recent news articles I can access here are from last Thursday, reporting the Chinese government lifted its ban on Youtube.com. I suppose I'll report from here myself, since last night it's been blocked again.

"On Friday, people in Beijing access the site without using special software to enter it through a proxy server, a common way of getting around Internet walls put up by the government. Google said Tuesday that China had blocked YouTube but that it did not know why. The block came during a week when China was criticizing an Internet video, released by the Tibetan government in exile and put up on YouTube and other Web sites, that showed Chinese security officers beating handcuffed Tibetans."-taken from Edward Wong's New York Times brief

China is reporting this video was fabricated. Other sites that are recently blocked: keepvid.com and many pornography Web sites, according to this article.

"China has closed more than 2,000 Web sites and arrested at least 45 people in a sting against online porn launched in January. It has also vowed to stamp out erotic text messages sent on cell phones. Various blog hosts have been shut down as well, including some known for political content that ran against the central government line. " -taken from Network World article.

'Atta boy China–way to be vigilant. (For my students who read my blog frequently and for those of you in my writing class where we're about to study sarcasm, parody and satire, this is sarcasm.)

Tibetan Serf Emancipation Day today, but no info available

Though the Chinese government may have invited more foreign media to Tibet in the lead up to today, Tibet's Serf Emancipation Day, according to a China Daily article, Internet users within China can't tell the difference. We can't get any foreign coverage of the holiday here anyway.

Internet searches for news about the holiday instated this year by the Chinese National People's Congress only reap articles by Xinhua, the media arm of the government, and China Daily, the country's only national English language publication published by the China Communist Party. Several other news sources came up in my searches–Reuters, Washington Post, a Taiwanese media outlet–but only a BBC and Times online article could be loaded. The Times online article was headlined, "New holiday celebrates freedom for serfs and lets China show itself in a good light."

Earlier in the week, Youtube.com was blocked to all Internet users within China. Apparently started over a video depicting the beating of a Tibetan by PRC officers, the entire nation of Internet users was denied Youtube for the better part of this week. The government said the video was fabricated and the site is again available. Read Al Jazeera's report here.

Today's holiday is meant to celebrate the start of Chinese rule in Tibet, which began in 1959. The government's position is that it freed Tibetans from primitive slavery and antiquated living conditions. The holiday was formalized weeks after last Spring's Lhasa protests, during which Tibetans rioted against the Chinese government's rule.

Here's what I'm interested in: According to a Xinhua article, the holiday is meant to celebrate the freedom from primeval slavery Tibetans suffered under out-moded serf style rule. According to another China Daily article, only 5 percent of the population in old Tibet owned serfs. But according to yet another Xinhua article, more than a million Tibetans were freed when the Chinese came in 1959 and that that number, one million, comprised 95 percent of all Tibetans. This means before 1959, Tibetans were either serf owners or serfs.

If these numbers are factual and true, they're astounding and provide great credence to some of the government's actions in 1959. But I don't know if they're true. The journalists writing these stories work for the government and the government won't allow me to read any articles on the issue other than those written by journalists working for the government. I can't corroborate this information with any sources from outside of China. It's insular, inflexible and frankly scary and it doesn't provide a convincing-enough argument for me.

But lest I feel caged in and isolated in China, the government wants me to read another Xinhua article headlined, "Curious about Tibet? Look, listen and see for yourself!" Well, I can't. Since the beginning of February, foreigners haven't been allowed to go to Tibet or large parts of Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai provinces.

It's not that I don't think these things are true, it's that I'm only permitted one source of information and I'm not willing to believe anything until I can get a few sources on the same issue. I guess it's another situation where the government just asks me to take their word for it. By now, I want to see things for myself.

Beijing from the back seat

An afternoon ride in the back seat of a motorcycle cab through the hutong from Jingshan Park through, within the inner city walls, to near Chongwenmen.