July 13th, 2009
HUIZHOU, China — Blind luck sent hundreds of Muslim Uighurs to a factory here last year to make Nike shoes, instead of five hours north, where their friends and neighbors from the same rural patch of China’s far northwest went to make toys.
Though they aren’t there, the Shaoguan toy factory is heavy on the minds of Uighurs here, as they wait for news of loved ones and friends who have had little contact with the outside since the June 26 toy factory brawl and murder of Uighurs in their factory dorms — the incident that helped ignite mass protests and 184 deaths in Xinjiang province July 5.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china-and-its-neighbors/090713/uighur-workers-guangdong
July 10th, 2009
SHAOGUAN, China — Three weeks after simmering racial tension escalated to mayhem and a double murder at a toy factory here, about 750 Uighur workers remain largely out of sight, behind locked gates and guarded doors — perhaps because they are at the center of a storm that has brought international attention to a remote Chinese province.
Most of the Xinjiang migrants who arrived at the massive factory in northern Guangdong province in May are apparently being held in a branch workshop 15 miles up the road, after the fight here led to mass protests and killings 2,000 miles away in their home province. Their tightly guarded new home and workshop is sealed off, and requests to visit inside and interview the Uighur men playing pool behind the gates after dark were refused by guards without explanation.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/uighurs/xinjiang/guangdong-factory
June 23rd, 2009
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
June 9th, 2009
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
June 2nd, 2009
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
June 2nd, 2009
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
May 12th, 2009
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
April 7th, 2009
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
April 1st, 2009
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
February 26th, 2009
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
