sinoscribe
Journalist Kathleen E. McLaughlin

Ai Weiwei’s internet game

BEIJING — Ai Weiwei believes in the power of the internet. That’s precisely why on July 1, he wants China to stop using it.

A general internet strike — no work, no games, no email or anything else online — for 24 hours on the date the government plans to require censorship software on all new computers, he says, will be a quiet act of rebellion. Not coincidentally, July 1 is the 88th anniversary of the Communist Party of China. Though he posted the idea, Ai wants to leave the meaning to those who participate.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china-and-its-neighbors/090623/meet-the-man-who-wants-shut-down-the-internet-china

China’s response to H1N1

BEIJING — It’s become on-board theater for those arriving in China: A team of health workers, dressed head-to-toe in white space suits, boards each international flight to scan every passenger for fever and other flu symptoms before they are allowed to set foot in country.

The team moves from seat to seat, checking each traveler, pausing to confer over any abnormality. Stories abound from tourists and business travelers, relishing in the oddity that is China’s heavy-handed reaction to the swine flu, photographing alien temperature checkers, regaling friends back home with the strange tale.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china-and-its-neighbors/090609/greetings-earthlings-welcome-china

Geithner in China

BEIJING — Even as U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told state television on Tuesday that his counterparts in Chinese government are confident of their massive investment in U.S. dollars, ordinary Beijingers remain skeptical.

While Chinese government officials haven’t confirmed the confidence of which Geithner spoke, the regular folks of Beijing are shaking their heads about putting so many eggs in the American basket — and feeling they don’t get much in return.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china-and-its-neighbors/090602/street-view-Geithner

Eat a dog, catch rabies?

BEIJING — There are a million moral and ethical arguments against eating dogs.

Westerners like to make these arguments, while Chinese who enjoy the meal refute them with a polite scoff. The dogs you eat, they say, are different than those you keep as pets. The meat is healthy, especially in winter. But a growing body of evidence could make everyone think twice, as new studies emerge indicating that putting Fido on a plate is potentially harmful and even deadly to humans.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china-and-its-neighbors/090529/the-link-between-eating-dogs-and-catching-rabies

One year after Sichuan earthquake

BEIJING, China — Amid China’s greatest natural disaster in a generation — the massive earthquake that struck Sichuan province last May 12 — signs of hope emerged that the tragedy might change society.

But a year after the quake left nearly 90,000 people dead or missing, that initial promise of a more open and volunteer-minded China has faded. Back then, many predicted that Chinese volunteerism would blossom, and a freer press would result. Those predictions have yet to take root.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china-and-its-neighbors/090511/sichuan-quake-one-year-later

Inside the museum of the Chinese businessman

BEIJING — A museum devoted to Chinese businessmen evokes images of drab exhibition halls filled with scale models of earnest middle managers and blueprints of factory expansions.

Yet the Chinese Businessman Museum tells the fascinating tale of an ancient tribe of merchants who revolutionized the way business is done in China. They are credited with inventing the country’s first banking system, establishing a nationwide business alliance that would put modern networking to shame and, oddly enough, turning Maotai into the country’s most famous liquor.

They are the Jinshang merchants of Shanxi province, who for 500 years were China’s business elite — a reign that collapsed with the monarchy and stayed buried through the decades of chaos that ruled China through the 20th century. With China’s economic rise there is renewed interest in its ancient business luminaries.

The businessman museum, a gorgeous and sprawling complex of gray brick on the southeast edge of Beijing, uses only a portion of its grounds to show off its collection. Inside are 200-year-old contracts and passports, stamps and signboards of merchants and interactive photo and map exhibits. It is, quite simply, an elegant and well-planned museum with an interesting tale.

It is also dead empty.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china-and-its-neighbors/090407/businessmen-star-new-chinese-museum

China’s rise, through the eyes of its young

BEIJING — China has stepped up its play for more power in calling the shots in world economic affairs — suggesting a new global currency, demanding market reforms and grasping for more say, generally, in world financial affairs.

But what does this increasing government self-confidence mean to Chinese people? With the country facing rising unemployment and potential social unrest arising from the global crisis, questions abound on whether China can and should assume a leadership role as the G20 economic summit convenes this week in London.

There seems no better place to find out what young Chinese think of their country’s power position than “Beida,” the affectionate shorthand by which Beijingers know Peking University — ranked among the world’s top centers of higher learning and China’s haven of relative ideological freedom.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/commerce/090331/chinas-rise-through-the-eyes-its-young

Bad economy clears China’s air

TAIYUAN, China — The residents of Taiyuan measure their air pollution in dirty clothes.

In years past, when China’s boom created endless demand for this area’s coal, iron and steel, a white shirt stayed fresh only a few hours, turning black around the collar and sleeves before day’s end. When the government shut down hundreds of factories in and around Taiyuan ahead of the Olympics last year, clean shirts began to last two days. Now, six months into an economic slowdown that has snuffed demand for power and metals from China’s furnace, a man’s suit can stay crisp for three days without laundering.

“I don’t need to do so much laundry these days,” said Zhao Jihong, a 25-year-old environmentalist who works to encourage local companies to adopt pollution controls.

If there is a bright spot amid the global economic slump for China, it may be in the air — and in the water and soil. Dramatically slowed production in recent months has meant less pollution. In notoriously filthy places like Taiyuan, the capital of China’s coal country, that means more relatively blue skies and healthier breathing.

Grayish-brown smog still hangs in the air over Taiyuan, which has consistently ranked among the world’s most polluted cities. Yet even with the acrid smell and black traces of coal dust all around, its residents maintain things have improved immensely.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china-and-its-neighbors/090226/bad-economy-better-lungs

Dispatches from Tibet

I was one of the first foreign journalists since March 2008 allowed to travel independently to Tibet, although regulations still require hiring a government-approved guide. During my five-day trip, I sent dispatches from Lhasa for the REVIEW.

July 24, 2008
 
After only a few hours in Lhasa, one thing is crystal clear: Four months after the riots and subsequent crackdown, controls may be easing somewhat but this remains a very tightly controlled city under intense guard by Chinese military and police.

Uniformed soldiers and police stand watch in pairs and trios at most major intersections throughout the Barkhor district, a ring around the Jokhang Temple – one of the most sacred places in Tibetan Buddhism. As the faithful masses walk praying in a clockwise-turning throng around the temple they barely notice the guards and the police and soldiers pay little attention to the crowd. There is no visible aggression or animosity between the Tibetans and Chinese security forces. Life appears to be slowly getting back to some form of normal.

Chinese tour groups are in evidence, as are a handful of Western tourists. One of the few foreign aid workers who has remained in Lhasa throughout the chaos of 2008 said the city finally is regaining a sense of normalcy, despite the continued police and military presence.  Still there is much talk in hushed tones of Chinese repercussions against Tibetans involved in the riots, and the need for extreme caution. In other words, things are calmed but not healed.

Read the whole diary at the Far Eastern Economic Review: http://www.feer.com/politics/2008/july/lhasa-diary

Olympics suck up China’s already scarce water

Changgucheng, China – Three years ago, local government officials told farmers in this village of 7,00 residents to stop using water from a reservoir near their wheat and corn fields. If  they needed water, the farmers were told, they would have to dig a well.

“They said there wasn’t enough water,’’ Jia Jianguo, 60, recalled.

At their own expense, the farmers dug a 90-foot well. But even though the new irrigation system worked fine, the locals have been forced to pool their meager resources each year that the water recedes to keep their crops alive. The well is now 135 feet deep and the groundwater is seeping away as fast as the province’s increasingly scarce water supplies are being channeled some 100 miles southwest to the thirsty capital of 15 million, Beijing.

 Read more at Sfgate.com