15/02/12
Long struggle for a cleaner Lake TaiChina has spent billions of yuan trying to cleanse its third largest lake, where decades of pollution have brought ecosystems to the brink. But problems persist, report Liang Guorui and He Hanfu.
Read more here.
09/02/12
German chancellor visits GuangzhouMerkel winds up official trip with meeting and church tour with bishop ...Bishop Gan said he felt that the chancellor is a devout Christian and is particularly concerned about China's religious and social policies.
Read more here.
31/01/12
Inside China's Censorship MachineThe National Post excerpts a section of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom, by Rebecca MacKinnon, which explains the many layers of Internet censorship in China
Read it here.
12/01/12
Chinese workers threaten suicide at Foxconn
"When 300 men and women climb onto a rooftop and threaten to commit suicide in protest over denied compensation, it is impossible not to wonder how a company could lead its employees into such desperation."
Read more here
04/01/12
Two faces of China
Nearly 40 years after Nasa last did it, Chinese space agency announces its "preliminary plan for a human lunar landing"
and Ni Yalun, disabled after police beating and accused of 'making trouble', attends court on bed and aided by oxygen machine.
Read more here
21/12/11
The [Catholic] Church in China has never changed
In an interview by Gianni Valente with John Baptist Li Suguang of Nanchang, the Bishop says, "The Church in China has never changed a single iota of the Apostolic Tradition that was delivered to it."
Read more here
10/12/11
Warning on laziness sends Chinese officials to sleep
BEIJING (Reuters) - Five Chinese officials have been suspended from their jobs after they were observed sleeping or reading newspapers during a video conference on stamping out laziness at work, state media reported on Friday.
Read more here
26/11/11
China's leaders break ranksThere is no parliamentary cut-and-thrust; there are no televised debates or florid, adversarial rhetoric. But China's leaders are engaged in a vigorous debate about the country's direction as they jockey for position before next year's transition of power to a new generation.
Read more here.
25/11/11
Money donated to family with sick boysMORE than 76,000 yuan (US$12,069) has been raised for Xu Ping'an and Xu Pingkang after their 36-year-old father sought help from the public to save the two brothers who both suffer from life-threatening diseases.
Read more here.
15/02/12
Long struggle for a cleaner Lake Tai
"Lake Tai, also known as Taihu, is China’s third-largest freshwater lake and one of its most important water resources. The 2,400-square kilometre lake, in south China, is the source of the Suzhou River. It also feeds the Huangpu River, the waterway that passes along Shanghai’s Bund, perhaps the country’s most famous riverfront.
The water channels that criss-cross the region around Lake Tai have become the arteries of economic development. It is no exaggeration to say the lake is the heart that drives the seven cities of Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Hangzhou, Jiaxing and Huzhou."
(Read the whole article in ChinaDialogue 14/02/12)
09/02/12
German chancellor visits Guangzhou
German chancellor Angela Merkel, on an official visit to China, encouraged the Bishop of Guangzhou on February 4 to engage more in social service to help build a harmonious society based on freedom and equality.
Bishop Joseph Gan Junqiu of Guangzhou met Merkel for 30 minutes after showing her round the gothic Sacred Heart of Jesus Cathedral, commonly known as the Stone House Church, built in 1888.
“Merkel asked about the basic condition of Guangzhou diocese and the Church in Guangdong province, such as the number of Catholics, their age, occupations and what activities do they have besides regular Masses,” Bishop Gan said afterward.
(Read the whole article in UCANews (06/02/12)
31/01/12
Inside China's Censorship Machine
"China’s censorship system is complex and multilayered. The outer layer is generally known as the “great firewall” of China, through which hundreds of thousands of websites are blocked from view on the Chinese Internet. What this system means in practice is that when one goes online from an ordinary commercial Internet connection inside China and tries to visit a website such as hrw.org, the website belonging to Human Rights Watch, the web browser shows an error message saying, “This page cannot be found.” This blocking is easily accomplished because the global Internet connects to the Chinese Internet through only eight “gateways,” which are easily “filtered.” At each gateway, as well as among all the different Internet service providers within China, Internet routers — the devices that move the data back and forth between different computer networks — are all configured to block long lists of website addresses and politically sensitive keywords." Read the full extract in China Digital Times (30/01/12)
12/01/12
Chinese workers threaten suicide at Foxconn
"Around 300 workers at a Foxconn plant climbed on to the roof and threatened to commit suicide over pay-cuts, conditions, and lack of compensation. Is enough being done for the workers?
...A little over a week ago, 300 employees at Foxconn’s Technology Park in Wuhan, China threatened their own lives because they were denied a vital pay increase. Foxconn told them they could either keep their jobs without it, or they could quit and be compensated." (Read the article at ZDNet.com (10/01/12)!
04/01/12
Two faces of China
A characterisitc of China is the two sides of its news reported by Western press. The guardian reports both the planned manned landing on the moon and the ill treatment of a 'trouble maker' in Beijing
See
the one here
and
the other here in the Guardian (04/01/12)
21/12/11
The [Catholic] Church in China has never changed
Bishop John Baptist Li Suguang says, "It would be a great gift if the Pope could understand China, that is the concrete cultural and social situation in which the Church finds itself living in China. There is much to know, much to comprehend. Sometimes there are those who spend a week in China and then go home and begin to pretend they know all about the events in the history of Chinese Catholics."Read the whole article in 30 Days (21/12/11)
10/12/11
Warning on laziness sends Chinese officials to sleep
The officials, all high-level workers at tax bureaux in the northern province of Shanxi, were supposed to be participating in a meeting to push better work discipline, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
It did not say for how long they would be suspended.
The campaign is to remind officials they cannot leave their posts, play games, or "attend recreational activities" during office hours, Xinhua added. Read the whole article in Freedom News (10/12/11)
26/11/11
China's leaders break ranks in lead up to new dawn
"...there are growing hints of an internal debate about the country's economic and social direction, amid increasing unrest and concerns about economic prospects. Some see this as a choice between the "Chongqing" model and the "Guangdong" model. "This phenomenon is caused by the extremity of China's social problems," said Qiu. "On the one hand, over the past 30 years we have seen the emergence of China's middle class, who now have a stronger appetite for political participation and rights protection. The Guangdong model is focusing on this social structure. On the other hand, [there is] a wealth gap, which is what the Chongqing model is about." Read further in the Guardian (25/11/11))
25/11/2011
Money donated to family with sick boysLocals came to the aid of the family and helped with the boys' medical bills after they saw the story reported in Shanghai Daily on Monday.
Shane Islam of the US state of Texas e-mailed Shanghai Daily yesterday and said he would like to donate 20,000 to 30,000 yuan for the family. The Rotary Club, a US-based non-profit organization, also called to offer help to the family. (Read the whole article in Shanghai Daily (25/11/11) )
22/11/11
China reaffirms stance on climate change ahead of talks
Xie Zhenhua, head of the Chinese delegation to the Durban meeting, said China will stick to the same stance as other developing nations in pursuing the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.
The protocol reflects "common but differentiated responsibilities" and commitment to the protocol is a foundation of political trust. Xie made the remarks upon the release of a government white paper at a press conference in Beijing. (Read the whole article in Xinhua News 22/11/11)
17/11/11
Green experimental zone planned
"The experimental zone, which covers 21 counties in four Tibetan autonomous prefectures as well as a township in Golmud in Qinghai province, is expected to explore a mechanism for the ecological development and environment protection, according to the State Council executive meeting presided by Premier Wen Jiabao.
The Sanjiangyuan region, with an average altitude of more than 4,000 meters, is the source of three rivers - the Yangtze River, the Yellow River and the Lancang River.
The green cover in the experimental zone is set to be increased by 15 to 20 percent by the end of 2015 and 25 to 30 percent by 2020, according to the draft of the experimental zone."
(Read the whole article in China Daily (17/11/11)
14/11/11
China and the Vatican: why did it all go wrong?
"Forty years from now, there could be more Christians in China than any other country in the world. So it is especially unfortunate that relations between China and the Vatican have taken a turn for the worse.
For the last 15 years, relations between Rome and Beijing have shown slow but steady improvement following the late Pope John Paul II’s "One Church-Two Faces" policy in the mid-1990s." (Read the article in UCANews (14/11/11)
06/11/11
China's great gender crisis
"Chinese families have long favoured sons over daughters, meaning the country now has a huge surplus of men. Is it also leading to a profound shift in attitudes to women? ...
The country's new Five Year Plan sets an ambitious target of cutting the ratio [girls to boys] to 112 or 113 by 2016. Could China at last be poised to close the sex gap?" Read full report in the Guardian (02/11/11)
28/010/11
China Takes a Loss to Get Ahead in the Business of Fresh Water
"Towering over the Bohai Sea shoreline on this city's outskirts, the Beijiang Power and Desalination Plant is a 26-billion-renminbi technical marvel: an ultrahigh-temperature, coal-fired generator with state-of-the-art pollution controls, mated to advanced Israeli equipment that uses its leftover heat to distill seawater into fresh water." Read more in the New York Times (25/10/11)
26/10/11
China's family planning policy enforced with heavy-handed tactics
Family planning in Xiaotun village is deemed a success. Its population of 1,871 people increased by only 10 last year, or less than 0.5%...
Hu Ruiling, director in charge of women, acknowledged a considerable degree of intrusiveness. "We check every women in the village each month," she says. "If we find someone is pregnant with a second child, we suggest abortion."Read the whole article in the Guardian (26/10/11)
26/10/11
Television clampdown in China
China will limit the number of entertainment programmes allowed to air on television and push to replace them with morality-building programming, Chinese state media has reported.
China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television will, starting next year, restrict shows that 'record the dark and gloomy side of society', the Southern Metropolis Daily said.. Read the whole article in the Scotsman (26/10/11)
25/10/11
Marriage preparation
The Catholic Jinde Charities, report on their (Chinese language) website, that as part of their marriage preparation, 72 young folk are having training about AIDS and about the attitude one should have to sufferers. The link here is to the google automatic translation of the site from here you can click the heading (20/10/11)
19/10/11
Pandas for Edinburgh Zoo
SCEN (Scottish-China Education Network) members received a newsletter announcing this recently "The pandas are a gift from the People's Republic of China to the United Kingdom under an agreement between the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and the China Wildlife Conservation Authority. The pandas will be here for ten years, and we also hope to breed them as well as work on research and conservation. During this period an education programme and associated resources within the wider theme of China and the environment and encouraging a cross-curricular approach, will be developed and enacted."
(15/10/11)