China in Weibo/Episode 1: The Iconoclast of Lei Feng (Watch Video)

A famous reporter in China once told me: China is a country where truth is in short supply. Well, until weibo came along.

Weibo is the Chinese name for mircoblog. The most popular microblog service in China right now is the one provided by sina.com, or Sina Weibo. Weibo is a concept borrowed from Twitter, which is not accessible in China. Adopting Twitter’s standard, posts on weibo cannot exceed 140 Chinese characters, which actually account for more words than do English letters of the same amount. With 140 Chinese characters, roughly 70 words, a weibo post can express a lot.

The China unveiled on weibo is very different from the one presented in any traditional media outlet in the country. Weibo carries facts and opinions one can never see in traditional media, because weibo, which is open to everybody who can get online, is not so tightly controlled by China’s propaganda authorities. Despite rumors that the authorities may shut it down completely someday, so far, weibo is alive and well.

Weibo thus has become the platform for whistleblowers to reveal official corruption, for people to criticize the government or simply express opinions that might otherwise be silenced. As such, weibo also has become a window through which one can see China from a very different perspective.

Starting this week, I will choose on a rather regular basis interesting stories, debates and phenomena that I spot on Sina Weibo and present the information through multimedia.

This first episode is about Lei Feng, a national icon died 50 years ago, and how people use weibo to articulate different meanings of this icon than those presented in state media.

The New York Times published an article on March 5 on the same topic.

Related articles:

The real story behind Lei Feng’s photos  (in Chinese)

More on Lei Feng (Xinhua resource; in Chinese)

Story of the Other Side

Lin Yulan had good reasons to pronounce her whole life a failure.

Her revolutionary course with the nationalists in pre-communist China, to which she devoted the heyday of her life, was denounced and forgotten in her homeland once the communist party won the civil war. She fled to Taiwan, along with other nationalist elites. Personally, the man she married to cheated on her throughout their marriage, no matter in Guangzhou or Taiwan. Worst of all, amid the chaos and despair right before they fled the mainland, her only son wandered away in the city of Guangzhou, never seen by his parents again.

Lin Yulan is one of the characters in a newly released novel, A Thread of Sky, written by Chinese American writer Deanna Fei. Although not the leading role in the novel, Lin’s story is particularly touching to me, because it made me realize that something is missing, on the part of mainland China, in the representation of last century’s revolution.

Growing up in the mainland, I have known the nationalists almost always as the bad guys, while the communists the good ones, in all kinds of representation of the revolution—novels, movies, television dramas, children’s stories, etc, with Mr. Sun Zhongshan (Sun Yat-sen) being the only exception. Occasionally, the nationalists are portrayed as heroes, but usually only when they cooperated with or joined the communists. I never got to know how it was like for the individuals who belonged to the other camp, what they experienced, how they felt, and what they had to tell.

Lin Yulan’s story somehow became my first chance to gain some insights. Born and raised on the mainland, Lin rose from the countryside to join the nationalist revolution, fighting for women’s equal rights. Qiu Jin, the legendary female revolutionary who sacrificed her life to overthrow the rule of the Qing court, was Lin’s idol.

I found Lin’s passion and dedication just as strong as her communist counterparts depicted in stories popular in the mainland. They might have served different party, but they had the same goal of liberating Chinese women from cruel depression and above all, to change China.

Lin’s story is also the first one that shows me the personal distress and pain experienced by the nationalists when escaping the mainland. It was chaos, fear, and misery. Mainland stories never gave much attention to the kind of human suffering the other side lived through.

The corruption of some nationalist officials notwithstanding, thousands of individuals like Lin in the nationalist party fought, died and shed blood for the revolution: first to overthrow the Qing ruling, later to defend the nation against Japanese invasion. Their life, their struggle, their pain and sacrifice should also be recognized and remembered in mainland China, as have been done with stories of communist revolutionaries.

As mainland cultural workers increasingly try to move the focus of narrative from prominent historic figures to ordinary individuals in the communist camp, more similar stories should be devoted to the nationalists as well. The commemoration of the revolutionary achievements of the nationalists should not be limited to showing the giant portrait of Sun Zhongshan on the Tiananmen Square during the October 1 national holiday. The younger generations of China deserve to know a more accurate and complete version of the revolutionary history. To quote from the novel, “But her [Lin Yulan’s]sacrifices, even forgotten, had made a difference.”

Related article: 
For a Chinese-American Writer, Split Images of China

Google to Resume Search Service in China: A Win-Win Solution?

The Chinese government renewed Google's Internet service license recently, the Associated Press reported today.

The catch? Google ought to stop automatically directing mainland users to its Hong Kong-based search site, which is not cencored by the Chinese government. Meanwhile, to continue to operate within China, Google is very likely to filter information as required  by the government.

This seems to be a win-win solution for both Google and the Chinese authorities.

Google got what it wanted: the chance to expand business and exploit profit potentials in China's growing Internet industry. The Chinese government, on the other hand, eased its tension with Google and perhaps other Western businesses, while at the same time managed to remain its control over information flow.

But what about Chinese web users? While a top American Internet company celebrating its commercial gains and the Chinese authorities chuckling at their political victory, millions of Chinese people hunger for more information are set to be the loser.

Even when Chinese netizens were directed to Google's Hong Kong site, certain information was still blocked to them, according to NPR. Baidu, China's biggest Internet search service, is never interested in challenging the authorities. Now with Google resuming its China-based, i.e. filtered, service, everything is simply same old, same old.

As is Chinese web users' effort to surpass the Great Firewall.  Fortunately for many, access to more information is only a software away.

Related stories:

AP report

NPR blog

Netizens Criticize Earthquake News for not Covering the Disaster

TV shows rescue workers flying to Qinghai


Some Chinese netizens have voiced displeasure over the fact that despite state media's heavy coverage on the earthquake in Yushu, the news is not really about the disaster. In particularly, it is not about the suffering victims.

Instead, the coverage is mostly about rescuing workers saving lives, government officials visiting disaster zones, and celebrities writing big checks, etc.

As one Chinese blogger put it, "all the news is not about the disaster or the victims. The theme is about the brave armed police officers and rescue workers." On TV, as this blogger described, rescue workers were dressed in red uniforms, fought against all odds "to create one after another miracle of life," and then there is cheering and happy tears, along with moving music soundtrack and emotional announcements from news anchors.

Not that there is anything wrong with all these, but what about the victims? What about their suffering, their loss, their pain? Who would give them some voice in the media?

True, today's state media in China no longer simply rely on Xinhua text, photos or footage in their coverage. True, newspapers, magazines, television stations from all around the country now could go to the disaster zone and gather abundant information enough for 24/7 live news feed. But make no mistake, quantity does not translate into variety of content.

Studies by media scholars show that during major disasters, state media in China usually frame their stories from the perceptive of government reactions or rescue work, rather than human interest. In other words, the news is often chockfull of rescuers' actions, quotes from government officials, but not much about individual suffering.

Such a pattern has been repeated in various disaster coverage for at least the past decade, including the 1998 Yangtze River flood and the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In covering other man-made disasters such as the melamine-tainted baby formula scandal and many coal mine accidents, the official angle is even more dominant.

In comparison, Western newspapers tend to focus their coverage of disasters on the human interest angle. In the New York Times' coverage of the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, for example, the narrative of most stories was based on individual victims, who were mentioned by full name, age, quoted directly, and depicted with great details.

I'm not saying that the New York Times is the golden standard that all Chinese media have to follow. I simply want to make the point that if a foreign newspaper could give personal voices to the suffering individuals, why not media in these people's own country? Why the authorities are so afraid of showing people's grievance and suffering, even during natural disasters? What drastic result could letting out the victims' voices incur? I really do not understand the rationale in the minds of those propaganda officials.

People affected by the disaster need to tell their stories and share their feelings, and other people want to hear. Why not target the camera at the victims, and let them express themselves? So they know that people around the country, including the media, care about them, and people watch the media can feel better connected with those in need.

The Life-and-Death Struggle for Chinese Home Owners: At Least in a TV Drama

Guo Haiping (right) and Guo Haizao, sisters experiencing the struggles for owning a home, in the TV drama Wo Ju.

To own a home could be a matter of life and death for Chinese people. This is one of the messages a popular yet controversial TV drama tries to send.

"Wo Ju" (蜗居, meaning living like a snail in a small place), a 33-part series adopted from a novel of the same title, was one of the most popular TV dramas in China in 2009. The show tells stories of conspiracy between corrupt officials and real estate developers, the disparity between haves and have-nots in urban China, and the tough life people have to live in order to save or make money for buying a home, among other things--all very familiar to Chinese people.

In the drama, which is set in contemporary China in a fictional Shanghai-like city of Jiangzhou (江州), a low-income family even lost a life in a stand-off against the demolishing of their ghetto. The developer offered the family a brand new apartment for free, something these people could never dream of owning, in exchange for the family dropping the charge against the developer for killing a family member during demolishing.

"A life exchanging for a home," a government official in the show said of the incident. And yet, this official is behind the demolishing effort and devotes himself to using his political power to make way for property developments, and then shares with the developers the huge profits.

Besides plots that vividly depict today's social reality in China, the censorship rumor around the show made it even hotter. The rumor started when the rerun of the show on a Beijing television channel stopped abruptly after 10 episodes. Words then spread on the Internet that China’s governing body of broadcast media ordered the show off the air, on the ground of sexual content.

Viewers also noticed that the TV version of "Wo Ju" had 33 episodes, while the web and DVD versions had 35 episodes. Beijing News said in a story that Beijing TV cut two episodes' length of sexually explicit content before showing it.

Wang Lizhi, a university professor in Beijing, said the show went through the first round of broadcast across China but is not up for reruns like many other popular TV dramas. As Prof. Wang saw it, the issue with the show was not obscene content, but sharp language.

"Wo Ju" is known for its stinging comments that reflect the reality only too candidly. For example, one character told his wife that he took a usurious loan in order to make down payment for their new home. “The interest is only a little bit higher than bank loans,” he says, trying to calm down his furious wife. This comment implies that mortgage in China are having interests almost as high as usury.

In another scene, the wife of the low-income family complains: “We are all proletariat, all working people. There is neither lowliness nor nobleness among labor divisions, but why in a place like Jiangzhou some people live in garden villas…while we live in such a place [a city ghetto]? We are working honestly, too!”

"Such extreme language will influence social mood,” Prof. Wang said. When such expressions gain currency among people, they might encourage extreme actions. “It is better to use rationality. There is no benefit if people are emotional,” he said. For him, stopping reruns of the show was more of a stability consideration.

Despite the controversy, the series is still available on various websites.

News reports about the controversy:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/society/2009-12/12/content_12634070.htm

Watch the show:
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTI1NzAyMjYw.html

Related story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/business/global/05yuan.html

Entertainment Extravaganza and/or Propaganda Campaign: The Spring Festival Gala Show's Tough Job

Wang Fei performs at the CCTV Spring Festival Gala






The people, the party, the advertisers, all of them need to be pleased, and that’s the mission of the Spring Festival Gala show. By the eve of the Year of Tiger, the job for China Central Television (CCTV) has only gotten tougher.

For the past nearly three decades, watching the Spring Festival Gala show on CCTV has become a new custom of Chinese people’s lunar New Year celebration. The show is never pure performing arts, but always carries messages that the ruling party wants to convey to the people, which mostly promotes the legitimacy of the party. But in this year’s show, comparing with those in recent years, the propagandist intention seemed to be more blatant.

Particularly in those group song performances, by singers dressed up in minority outfits, or very old artists dubbed as teenagers, etc., political slogans have been turned into lyrics. A singer in Uyghur costume, for example, sang enthusiastically about the benefits of the newly established rural cooperative health care system. In reality, though, the system is facing all kinds of problems, and exactly how many rural residents are benefiting from it is worth questioning.

In another performance, a group of teenagers expressed loyalty to the party by singing: “without the communist party, there will be no new China”, and “following the community party, let’s build a great China.”

The first line has been the central theme of the party propaganda since the foundation of the People’s Republic, and has become such a cliché that very few young Chinese today would embrace it. But for the purpose of propaganda, sing it anyway. The second line is a relatively new invention, and more or less bears some nationalism sensation, which is gaining popularity among the Chinese youth. In one way or another, the party is trying to fortify its legitimacy in the minds of the entire nation by imposing the message on the performances, rather aggressively.

A show full of political preaching could only annul the intended political messages, of course. So for a better part of the entire gala show, entertainment is still the focus. Super star Wang Fei’s appearance certainly put this year’s show at a high point of China’s pop culture, while the reunion of Xiaohu Dui satisfied the nostalgia of China's rising middle-class: the generation born in the 1970s.

Meanwhile, putting together such entertainment extravaganza has become increasingly expensive, with ever fancier visual effects, better stage equipments, etc. CCTV therefore had to use the show to serve the advertisers, too. Unlike the Super Bowl broadcast in the U.S., CCTV’s five-hour airing of the gala was commercial free, which left the television station with few choice but to weave product promotion into performances. So actors wore aprons printed with the name of Lu Hua cooking oil, magician Liu Qian made a magic with Hui Yuan juice, and an actress in a short drama giving out Guo Jiao 1573, a famous liquor, as gifts.

Overall, it’s a tough job for the gala to appeal to everybody. After all the extravagance was over, however, people would keep talking about those entertaining or nostalgic moments, while forget those propagandist messages pretty quickly. Chances are, people would remember Guo Jiao 1573 better than the success of the rural health care system.

See more of the gala:
http://ent.sina.com.cn/f/v/2010cctvcw/index.shtml

Propaganda or Collective Memory? Citizens Invited to Help Build National Day Websites

The red banners on the homepage of sohu, sina and xinhua

The celebration of the 60th birthday of the People’s Republic of China has become a phenomenon on the web. Major web portals in China: sina.com.cn, sohu.com, 163.com, and major news websites such as xinhuanet.com, and chinanews.com.cn, all have a banner at the very top of their homepage, which links to a separate website dedicated exclusively to the celebration of the anniversary.

All the banners use red as the background color, and all carry the title: “Celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.” Sohu adds a subtitle of its own: “Seeking a Modern China,” and Sina’s subtitle reads: “Nation/Home.” Not only that these banners are in pretty much the same design, located at exactly the same spot on each website (except 163.com), even the width of the banner is also uniformed: about one centimeter. This is not coincidence, but very likely the result of some administrative orders from the top power.

One can sure call it propaganda, but propaganda of a very fine kind, propaganda with a revolution: invitation of contribution from citizens. In other words, these websites are not entirely just a venue of official messages, but a platform for common folks to share their life experiences and memories.

On these websites are state media reports, official documents, as well as memoirs, videos, and photos produced by common netizens. The content is so comprehensive that they record a tremendous amount of experiences of the nation in the past 60 years: from major historical events to individual memories, from red guards to someone’s childhood jelly shoes.

Texts, photos, videos, slide shows, forums, blogs, etc., these sites have them all. The range of information is also very broad: history, current events, politics, economics, culture, arts, literature, music, sports, life style, feelings, opinions, and so on.

The sheer content of these websites may simply be too much for one to absorb. Nevertheless, they very well demonstrate the capability and power of the Internet in the massive media campaign for celebrating the anniversary. And this time, citizens are involved in contributing the content, turning a traditionally state propagandist endeavor into a fabulous show of collective memory.

Special National Day websites by major web portals and news organizations:
Sina: http://news.sina.com.cn/z/guoqing60/index.shtml
Sohu: http://news.sohu.com/s2009/guoqing60/
163: http://news.163.com/special/guoqing60/
Xinhua: http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/60zn/
China News: http://www.chinanews.com.cn/special/60years/news.shtml

Update: some of the sites changed its outlook on the actual National Day, Oct. 1.

TV Dramas Shed Light on Ideal Values

one scene from Struggle: Lu Tao, middle, with his friends




Among hundreds of TV dramas aired across China in 2007, ten received the most reviews from blogs on Sina.com, one of China’s largest blog sites, according to a ranking released by Sina blog this month. It is interesting to see that many bloggers took the chance of reviewing these popular TV dramas to discuss values in the transitional society of today’s China.

These discussions indicate some Chinese people’s resentment of the money and material-driven values that are prevalent in today’s China. Meanwhile, they expressed their longing for some ideal and traditional values presented in the TV dramas.

At the top of the ranking is a show about a young man from the countryside, Xu Sanduo, and his experience as a soldier. Innocent, naive, clumsy, and lacking confidence, Xu Sanduo, regarded by viewers as the Chinese version of Forrest Gump, is persistent and always does things with his full heart. Eventually, beyond almost everyone’s expectations, he becomes a member of the elite special force of the army.

Netizens wrote about their love for the show and the character. One says that while too many TV dramas focus on the vileness and dirtiness of things like the money-power exchange, this one shows that “after all, there is such a clean aspect of human nature.” Some say the character is both realistic and idealistic, and that “we badly need people so simple as Xu Sanduo in reality.”

The second ranked drama is called “Struggle,” about the life right after college of a group of young people of the 1980s generation. The main character, Lu Tao, has two fathers. His biological father is a rich businessman who recently returned from Wall Street, and his stepfather, who raised him, is a government official who doesn’t have the money to buy his own house. Lu Tao worked hard and made his own fortune in real estate, but gave up the money to pursue his dream and true love. He also decided that his poor stepfather is the man he would like to call “father,” while his biological father has a lot of money but little love.

Many young people of the same generation love this show, praising it as portraying their real struggle for life, love and career. Still, they are very much into the idealism reflected in the drama, i.e. the classic theme of seeking true love over money.

One commentator says that after watching the drama, he realizes that “pursuing money is never as important as pursuing love, including love for family, lover and friends,” and that “if always listening to the rich father and looking at life with a businessman’s eyes, life will not have passion, but only profits.”

“We are in a society that is full of the taste of money and more and more people are being driven by money. Where is the direction? Don’t know. Where are our old ideals?” writes a blogger who claims to be a member of the 1980s generation and lays out a few thoughts drawn from the drama, among which is the statement that “money cannot control ideals.”

Another drama among the top ten is staged in a five-star hotel, involving business competition and family foes. In such a show, blogger Jiang Xiaoyu sees “the universal values of the true, good and beautiful, which reflect Chinese people’s ultimate pursuit of civic character amid social transition.” The show features a group of honest, hard-working and simple people, who represent “the normal life that modern Chinese citizens dream about in this transitional period that loses key values and makes people feel insecure.”

Watching TV is a major form of entertainment for tens of millions of Chinese people and they love TV dramas, which sometimes satisfy viewers’ psychological need for an ideal world and maybe give them hope that living by ideal values could bring happiness and success. It is interesting to see how the Chinese public buys into such idealism, which, on the other hand, indicates people’s disappointment and dissatisfaction with reality. These blog discussions also reveal people’s awareness of the value change associated with China’s social transition, and that they are willing to uphold traditional, or main values like true love, honesty and hard work. At the same time, they also accept some new values represented by the younger generation, such as pursuit of personal dreams and fulfillment of one’s individuality.

See the post on China Digital Times

Control of Online Discussion Seems Tighter in China

Suspended bullog.cn with a notice on its homepage

There are signs that public discussions on the Internet in China have been put under tighter control lately, although the 17th Party Congress is over.

Bullog.cn, a blog site featuring intellectuals’ discussion over political, society and cultural topics, is suspended. Currently on its homepage is nothing but one notice that reads: “Bullog is going through additional procedures, and will reopen very soon. Please don’t worry.”

The website does not articulate what kind of “additional procedures” it is going through, but it’s not hard to imagine that they are likely related to government regulations on blog sites. Essentially, this note is suggesting that Bullog has been ordered by the authorities to stop operation and has to gain permission to reopen, probably after some adjustments to its content.

As already mentioned in the previous entry, Tianya public forum has banned political discussions. But that’s not it. Opening the Tianya site, one can now see two cartoon figures: one female and one male police officer , floating on the page. Clicking on the cartoon leads to the website of the Network Security Alarm System of Haikou police. Tianya forum was registered in Hainan Province, where Haikou is the capital city.

The cartoon officer is an encouragement for site viewers to report to the cyber police any “insecure” web information and conduct. According to the criteria provided by Haikou cyber police, such harmful information and conduct include spreading computer viruses, attacking other computer systems, and publishing information that “harm national security and social stability.”

These incidents might be an indication that the government is still nervous about online political discussions in the wake of the 17th Party Congress and the creation of a new politburo. Popular online public forums and blogs in China are now full of celebrity gossip, personal life drama, love and sex, money making tip as well as lots of nonsense, while criticism of China’s politics and society is scarce.

Bullog
http://www.bullog.cn/Portal.aspx
Sohu blog
http://blog.sohu.com/
Sina blog
http://blog.sina.com.cn/
Haikou cyber police
http://www.haikou.cyberpolice.cn/

Internet in China Silent about Top Leader Reshuffle

The coverage of the 17th Party congress is very red







Despite extensive coverage in China’s news media of the 17th National Congress of the Chinese Community Party, discussion of the reshuffle among top leaders is absent, although it has been the focus of foreign media’s coverage of the congress.

Xinhua.com and sina.com.cn, tow of the biggest online news venues in China, both carry special sections for the congress with abundant stories about the main sessions, side lines as well as representatives. Almost all of the stories, however, focus on singing praise of the Party’s achievements in China’s development in the part five years.

Public online comments, that is, those there are allowed to stay, follow the same tone, as demonstrated on Xinhua and Sina BBS. There are some sketchy mentioning of environmental problems and the income gap among people’s comments, but are mostly with a mild tone or uttering hope and support for the Party’s “wise decisions” to solve them.

The permitted theme of the coverage, including commentaries, across the board of Chine’s media is clear: celebrating, supporting and strengthening the rule of the Party.

There is no report or comment on one of the congress’ most important issues, personnel change among the top leaders, particularly the new politburo, on China's major news websites or BBS, at least so far. On one of the most popular Chinese public forum, tianya.cn, there is even no post about the congress at all. As a matter of fact, Tianya has banned since last month all posts regarding Party and national leaders and other political issues.

The silence suggests the sensitivity of the personnel issue, and the Party’s extreme caution in controlling public discourse of this matter in China. Unlike during the National People’s Congress earlier this year, the week of the Party congress is not so much a time for the public to voice concerns, debate policies and suggest solutions.

One of the few negative, sort of, messages stands out among the overwhelming positive reflections is anti-corruption, something the current leadership has vowed to contain.


Special web sections of the congress
http://news.sina.com.cn/z/ccp17th/index.shtml
http://www.xinhuanet.com/17da/index.htm

Chinese Authorities Regulate Sexual Content in Broadcast

commercials with sexual implications are often seen on Chinese television

Prompted by some sex talk programs on several radio stations in Sichuan, China’s broadcast regulator has banned television and radio stations from planning, producing and broadcasting programs relating to sex life, experience or medicines.

Calling such programs “obscene,” the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) said programs containing sexual content are not allowed for “any reason or under any name,” and vowed to punish those responsible for the programs on Sichuan provincial and Chengdu municipal radio stations, both run by local governments.

As Chinese broadcasters, all owned and supervised by the government, pursue higher profits, programs containing sexual content are gaining more air time, while the central authorities still take sex as a taboo in mass media like television because it “seriously pollutes the social atmosphere, harms the physical and mental health of the young and undermines the image of broadcasters.”

The SARFT has made several efforts in recent years trying to keep the air clean. Just last month, the administration issued a ban on commercials with “sex implications” in addition to those for sex improvement products.

Despite all the bans and regulations, Chinese public are only seeing more and more sexual content, in one way or another, in the media around them.

Netizens Don’t Get New Web Vocabularies

Many Chinese web users found themselves nearly illiterate in front of a list of new vocabulary said to be mostly originated from the Web, which was released on Thursday by China’s Ministry of Education.

The list, containing over 170 new Chinese words, is compiled by language experts at the ministry, as part of its report on the use of Chinese language in 2006.

But a majority of the over 1000 netizens commenting on the new release, including some heavy web users, said they did not recognize most of these new words. Indeed, except for only a few terms, such as blog article, grassroots netizen, second-generation one-child family, and Gu Ge, the Chinese version for Google, the list is full of words that do not make much sense to even native Chinese speakers.

“I’m afraid it’s the first time for most Chinese people to see 90 percent of the words on the list,” one commented.

“I’m on the Internet for more than 14 hours everyday, but found half of the words unheard of…” said another.

Quite a few people saw such vocabulary simply as language pollution that should be tossed away instead of receiving official documentation. Some went on to criticize the MOE as being irresponsible in giving official release to such terms, since they might disappear very soon and would not stay in the daily language use in China’s fast changing cultural and social arena.

But some commentators supported the documentation of these new words and called for a more open attitude toward new trends in the development of Chinese language.

“I always welcome new words springing up like mushrooms after rain,” one poster said. “The mother tongue has a distant origin and a long stream, rich and deep, only because it is constantly changing and developing.”

Nevertheless, it seemed to be a common agreement that time will finally decide whether these new words, however ridiculous they might appear to be, will become permanent components of modern Chinese.

According to the MOE report on Chinese language use, the number of Chinese blogs has come to the third place right after Japanese and English ones. Blogs, Internet news, email, BBS and cell phone short messages have become the main origin of new words in Chinese, the report says. This is also the first time the MOE tried to document some of these new words entering Chinese people’s daily life in recent years, said Li Yuming, head of the ministry’s Bureau of Language and Information Management.

The list of the new words
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2007-08-16/133913677927.shtml

The MOE report on Chinese language use in 2006
http://www.moe.edu.cn/edoas/website18/info31533.htm

Online comments
http://comment4.news.sina.com.cn/comment/skin/default.html?channel=gn&newsid=1-1-13677927&style=0

The Today Show Goes to the Beijing Olympics

As Beijing celebrates the one-year count down to the 2008 Olympic Games, American television, such as America’s No.1 morning show, the Today show on NBC, is getting excited, too.

This morning, live scenes from the count down ceremony at the Tiananmen Square cut into Today’s regular programming from time to time. NBC correspondent Mark Mullen reported live from the square, making NBC the only western broadcaster to cover the event live, according to NBC producer Adrienne Mong’s blog.

Meanwhile, the show aired a series this week called "China Rising," with Today’s star Meredith Vieira reporting from Beijing on the changes taking place in the ancient city and the whole country’s ardent preparation for the big game.

Like many other overseas media institutions, the NBC depicts this Olympics as the “defining moment” for China in the 21st century, a sign of a “new China,” a chance for the country to increase its international prestige and demonstrate to the world that “China belongs to the 21st century.”

During Ms. Vieira’s trip to Beijing, it’s also noticeable that as a foreign journalist, she was allowed to access the construction site of the main stadium and interview Chinese Olympic athletes face-to-face during their practice at the National Olympic training center. She was even able to face a television camera right in the middle of the crowds on Tiananmen Square, something could have got her into trouble with Chinese authorities if done at a different time.

“There is still no freedom of press in China,” Ms. Vieira said on the square, but the Chinese government has loosened its control on foreign journalists' coverage of the Olympics.

NBC also mentioned a few hard challenges facing the Chinese government in hosting the big game, such as heavy pollution in Beijing. Mr. Mullen said he “would not be surprised” if factories in the city were ordered to be shut down during the game.


Today in Beijing
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/20112629/

Related blogs
http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/08/07/307318.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage
http://meredithtoday.ivillage.com/entertainment/2007/07/china_trip.html

Chinese People who Shape the World

the latest issue of Time magazine

The Time magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world features four figures from mainland China this year, one of the biggest pool of Chinese honorees in the past four years.

Chinese president Hu Jintao is on the list for the third time since 2004, and is the only Chinese figure appearing on the list for more than once in recent years.

Also on the list is Mr. Liu Qi, Beijing Communist Party Secretary and the head of the city’s Olympic Organizing Committee. He was chosen for his important and challenging role in organizing the 2008 Olympic Games.

Zeng Jinyan, wife of environmental activist Hu Jia, is listed as one of the “heroes and pioneers” for her bravery of keeping blogging about she and her husband’s battle against government oppression.

Internet pioneer Pony Ma, inventor of China's popular online communication service QQ, was selected, too. The online service has evolved into a 100-million-user network for online socializing and entertainment.

It’s also interesting to look at who else from mainland China were selected into Time 100 in recent years.

There were four in last year’s list, too. They were Chinese premier Wen Jiabao; Ma Jun, a journalist turned environmental advocate; blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng who filed a lawsuit against officials forcing women to have abortion or sterilization when enforcing the one-child policy; and business man Huang Guangyu, an entrepreneur who made a big fortune by building a discount electronics chain around China.

In 2005, Hu Jintao and actress Zhang Ziyi were on the list. Ms. Zhang Ziyi was called “China's gift to Hollywood.” A year before, again, Mr. Hu was on the list. Accompanying him were Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi and NBA star Yao Ming.

The annual Time 100 list provides a window to see the reach of some Chinese figures’ international influence, and as China grows, chances are there will be more and more Chinese faces appearing among “the people who shape our world.”

The 2007 Time 100
Hu Jintao
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/time100/article/0,28804,1595326_1615513_1615464,00.html
Liu Qi
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/time100/article/0,28804,1595326_1615513_1614661,00.html
Zeng Jinyan
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/time100/article/0,28804,1595326_1615754_1616169,00.html
Pony Ma
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/time100/article/1,28804,1595326_1615737_1615710,00.html

The 2006 Time 100
Wen Jiabao
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187198,00.html
Ma Jun
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187271,00.html
Chen Guangcheng
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1186887,00.html
Huang Guangyu
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187472,00.html

The 2005 Time 100
Hu Jintao
http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/2005/time100/leaders/100jintao.html
Zhang Ziyi
http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/2005/time100/artists/100ziyi.html

The 2004 Time 100
Hu Jintao
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,993962,00.html
Wu Yi
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,993958,00.html
Yao Ming
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,994049,00.html

Cartoon Channel Cancellation Received Mixed Reactions

While the cancellation of a cartoon channel in Zhengzhou, capital of central China’s Henan Province, may not be good news for young children, some parents were happy that it was no longer on air.

The parents complained that their children spent too much time, including sleep and homework hours, watching the cartoon channel, a subsidiary of Hunan Satellite TV and available in about a dozen Chinese cities.

One person, who called himself the father of a five-year-old, posted a comment on sina.com.cn and said that his child often spent a whole day watching the channel. He also protested that a Japanese cartoon program on the channel had too much violent fighting and bloody scenes.

Another lady told China Youth Daily about her concerns. Her four-year-old daughter was fascinated by the suicide of a cartoon character and she was afraid that the little girl might mimic the act.

Officials of Zhengzhou’s television provider and Hunan TV, however, said the removal of the channel was due to conflict in distributing local channel resources but not out of concern of the content or parents’ complaints.

But the explanation did not stop the public from debating on the Web on issues such as cartoon industry, television culture and education.

Many wrote that parents should blame their own failure in education, but not the cartoon television, for their children’s problems, while insisting that the children should have the right to watch cartoon.

“I don’t understand why [parents] blame television when their children were not well educated and controlled,” one post reads.

Some suggested a rating system for cartoon programs in China, like in some other countries.

People also criticized that Chinese television programs are having more and more violent or sexual contents.

“Some bad commercials, bad cartoon and bad dramas are aired over and over again on many TV stations,” one poster wrote while suggesting stronger control of program quality. “[I] would rather have fewer channels than so much trash. ”

The discussion inevitably touched on the comparison between Chinese and foreign, especially Japanese cartoon productions, and quite a few commentators were not happy that Chinese cartoon production has lagged behind.

“Had China’s cartoon developed better, things would not have been like this—everyone loves watching Japanese cartoon,” one note says.


China Youth Daily story
http://comment4.news.sina.com.cn/comment/skin/default.html?channel=gn&newsid=1-1-12898591&style=0

Online comments
http://comment4.news.sina.com.cn/comment/skin/default.html?channel=gn&newsid=1-1-12898591&style=0

Hunan satellite TV cartoon channel
http://www.hunantv.com/cartoon/

New Internet Publication Regulation to be Drafted

Xu Jinglei's online magazine

Drafting a new licensing rule for online magazines is on the agenda of China’s administration of press and publication, which will require online magazines to obtain license from the government before publishing, China Business News reported.

Online magazine has gained fast popularity in China in recent years, and it is estimated that there are a few hundred such digital magazines, run by companies or individuals, with viewers of nearly 40 million. A noticeable latest release of online magazine was that of popular movie star Ms. Xu Jinglei. The first issue of the bi-weekly online magazine, expected to make millions in advertisement income, was published earlier this month. Ms. Xu recruited a group of star writers to write for the magazine.

Most of China’s current online magazines did not have to obtain publication permits from authorities before making the content available online. But things will change after the new regulation is set up in the near future. No specific implement time, however, was indicated by officials from the press and publishing administration, and there was no word about whether the new stipulation will affect other online publications such as blogs.

http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2007-04-24/02491479329.shtml

Ms. Xu's online magazine overview
http://ent.sina.com.cn/f/laoxudzzz/index.shtml

Students Hope to be Away from Internet Porn

Bad Internet content harms students


Students around China have voiced welcome to a nationwide crack down on Internet pornography, a campaign launched by the Chinese government this month.

They knew they are an easily tempted group and some of them have already suffered from viewing too much unhealthy content from the Internet.

A secondary school student in Anhui was addicted to Internet porn and his grades suffered significantly. To pay for the fees he owed to an Internet cafe where he viewed those sites, he went so far as to steal machine parts from a factory.

Eighteen-year-old Beijing boy Liu Wei once had similar experience, and told Xinhua that he now hates those “dirty stuff” on the Internet.

Traditional media in China, including print and broadcast, are relatively clean of sexutal content because of tight control of the government, and no porn publication store is allowed in China.

In contrast, the Internet has become perhaps the freest media in China, both in terms of expressing people’s opinions as well as publishing conventionally deemed inappropriate or provocative contents such as exposing pictures.

Even on popular websites like sohu.com, yahoo.com.cn and sina.com, which are accessible to just about any Internet user, there are always a few sexually explicit video clips or photos on the home page, in entertainment section or blogs. Students can view such content easily, and if going to an Internet cafe, they can further log on to some porn sites without much effort and almost free of surveillance.

Setting up porn websites and publishing pornography on the Internet is illegal in China, but in recent years, there were several serious incidents where porn sites targeting viewers in China were registered on overseas servers, but those who ran the sites, for making money, were Chinese citizens, sometimes teenagers. Among about a million registers of these sites, most were Chinese youth, according to state media.

Statistics show that by June 2006, there were over 80 million adolescent web users in China, out of the total of 123 million, and about 30 million were elementary and secondary school students who are extremely vulnerable to Internet porn.

In addition, some young people got involved in the so-called “nude chat” on the Internet, using cameras. Lately, technology development allowed new channels for filthy content to reach students, such as porn video games downloaded to cell phones.

The government, schools and parents, including students themselves, have grown very concerned about the problem, but not enough has been done to cope with it.

In this crack-down campaign, which will last for six months, the authorities will “clean up” videos, photos or fictions on the Internet that contain pornographic content. Meanwhile, the authorities will also target online information that “disturbs social order,” as well as online forums, chat rooms and blogs that are deemed having grey area in “management responsibility.”


About the crack-down campaign
http://news.xinhuanet.com/edu/2007-04/19/content_5995268.htm
http://edu.people.com.cn/GB/1054/5637785.html
http://news.tom.com/2007-04-13/OI27/34990413.html

Other stories about Internet porn problem in China
http://news.xinhuanet.com/edu/2006-09/01/content_5033303.htm
http://www.yn.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2006-09/11/content_8007062.htm
http://www.people.com.cn/GB/jiaoyu/1054/3098263.html

A Day Packed with Corruption News

Left: wanted corrupt Yunnan official Hu Xing

Right: new province chief of Yunnan:
Qin Guangrong

The Chinese media on Wednesday seemed to be packed with news about corruption, and at least three of them made headlines on the front page of sina.com.cn, one of the biggest gateway websites in China.

Foremost is the news that the Central Disciplinary Commission of the Chinese Communist Party announced foul plays in local governments’ term exchange processes, such as bribing for office and appointing officials’ relatives to party posts.

Change of officials in the Party is generally not through popular election, but appointment by upper level party branches, a big opportunity for many people to seek higher offices or just to get into the ruling system.

The Central Disciplinary Commission found 121 cases nationwide of misconducts in last year's term exchange processes, disciplined more than 190 officials and removed over 600 persons from offices inappropriatly appointed to them, Xinhua reported.

Another news is about the on-going investigation of the social security fund embezzlement in Shanghai, for which the city’s former leader Chen Liangyu was sacked. On Wednesday, chief of Shanghai Procuratorate Wu Guangyu told local People’s Congress that seven people, two government officials and five company executives, are under investigation, China News Service reported.

On the same day, Mr. Wu’s counterpart in Zhejiang, Mr. Chen Yunlong reported to his provincial legislators that more than 100 officials at the county and above levels were sacked for bribery, power abuse and other misconducts in office in the past year, Xinhua reported.

Still another big anti-corruption news is the issuing of the order for arrest, with 50,000 yuan reward, of deputy chief of the transportation department of Yunnan province.

Hu Xing, 49, is suspected of concealing booty and perjury in relation to an “extraordinary economic crime,” according to a local newspaper. Hu has run away. There are speculations among the pubic that Hu is involved in something much more serious than concealing booty and perjury, otherwise he would not have to flee.

News about anti-corruption is important in the Party’s publicity strategy, because it is something the Chinese people are most concerned about and for which the Party is most criticized. But the Party’s propaganda machine would not just paint a picture of corrupt officials everywhere. Instead, it managed to publicize a story haling an apparently upright official among the cluster of bad news.

The exemplified official was the new province chief of Yunnan, the same province the wanted corrupt official Hu Xing served. Qin Guangrong, 56, was elected by Yunnan People’s Congress as the province chief on Wednesday. He pledged to the legislation body that he will “be decent as a person, be clean as an official,” and do every good for the people.

It might be a coincidence that so many corruption related news made into the media on the same day, but it should be noted that it is now the season for local governments to review their jobs in the past year, including their anti-corruption efforts. It should be no surprise to see more of such news in the coming weeks.

----by Josie Liu

Coverage about Hu Xing
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/l/2007-01-31/022912183138.shtml

Shanghai
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/l/2007-01-31/162312192031.shtml

Term exchange corruptions
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2007-01-31/210412193021.shtml

Qin Guangrong
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2007-01-31/222512193117.shtml

Zhejiang
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2007-01-31/204012192997.shtml

New Wave of Democratic Talks in Chinese Media Attract Attentions

CCTV Documentary: The Rise of the Great Nations


People in China noticed that the media have been unusually outspoken lately. An article published in an on-line chat room cited a few examples, including published interviews with human rights activists and dissent academics who are not favored by government censors, and several articles frankly advocating democracy and rule of law, something not very often seen in mainland media.

But the most remarkable media event recently is a documentary series, The Rise of the Great Nations, aired on one of China’s major propaganda organs, China Central Television.

The 12 part documentary looked into the rise of nine of the world's main powers, including Germany, Spain, Japan and the United States, over the past 500 years and examined why they thrived. Unlike the Communist Party’s long-time interpretation of history as ruled by class struggles and censure of capitalism, the documentary provided rather objective and factual narratives and analysis, an approach so unusual for CCTV that many viewers said they could not believe the show was produced by the station.

Mai Tianshu, one of the creators of the documentary, told a Chinese newspaper that the show aimed at helping the public to understand what is the origin and future trend of modern society, the importance of reason, compromise and cooperation in building a new system, and the necessity of a strong central power.

In the cyberspace and other media, people are comparing The Rise of the Great Nations with another mind-shaking documentary, The Young Death of a River. It was aired on the same station 18 years ago and has been deemed as having fanned the democracy fever among young people and therefore facilitated the demonstration at the Tiananmen Square in 1989. The Young Death of a River, or He Shang, denounced the traditional Chinese civilization, nurtured by the Yellow River, as close-minded and hidebound, and called on the Chinese nation to learn from western society’s “ocean civilization” in order to step up as a modern nation.

Some analysts say that like The River, The Rise foreshadows new moves of political reform, but others say it is just one implement of Chinese leadership’s intention to learn from western society, including its democratic and legal system, in search of appropriate ways for China’s modernization. Still others say the show is a good education for Chinese people, preparing them for China’s rise as a world power.

----by Josie Liu

http://washeng.net/HuaShan/BBS/shishi/gbcurrent/152466.shtml
http://washeng.net/HuaShan/BBS/shishi/gbcurrent/152450.shtml
http://washeng.net/HuaShan/BBS/shishi/gbcurrent/152452.shtml
http://club.cat898.com/newbbs/dispbbs.asp?boardID=1&ID=1391716&page=1

Supreme Court Set Limitations on Press Access
National and commercial secrets, personal privacy and name, address and picture of juvenile suspects are among the information barred from publicity, the Supreme Court said on Tuesday. Instead, the court system in China will universally adopt a news release-spokesman approach to handle release of information, Xinhua reported. Judges are also prohibited from speaking to journalists without authorization.

As legal issues are receiving more and more attention from the media and society in recent years and sometimes trigger bitter debate about the judicial process as well as verdict of certain cases, the new move would limit the public’s access to court information through the media.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/legal/2006-09/12/content_5082551.htm

Makeover for the Olympics in Beijing
Iron fences installed outside windows facing major streets in Beijing will be removed, the Beijing government ordered on Tuesday. Such fences, installed to prevent burglary, are seen extruding residential and business buildings everywhere in China. Officials in Beijing deem such fences as impairing the city look and therefore necessary to be eliminated before the 2008 Olympic Games. Instead, inside-building fences will be installed, the Beijing Times reported, but no details of funding for such changes were provided.

Besides removing the fences, other projects will be carried out in the next two years to make the city of Beijing look better, including cleaning up the city corners and turning spaces below the city’s giant over-head bridges into parks.
http://www.beijingtimes.com.cn/news.asp?newsid=170484

----by Josie Liu