news

Y.S.L. vs. P.R.C.

26 February 2009

This past week, Yves St. Laurent’s art collection was auctioned off, including two fountainheads (for $39 million) that were supposedly looted from the “Old Summer Palace in Beijing in 1860 when it was sacked and burnt by French and British armies during the Second Opium War.”  China tried to stop the auction last Thursday, but was rejected by the Paris court.

During this quarrel, St. Laurent’s partner, Pierre Berge, insisted that the artifacts were acquired legally. He is also reported to have said he “would agree to give them back – if Beijing gave Tibet its freedom.”

He is quoted in the Telegraph as saying:

“All they have to do is to declare they are going to apply human rights, give the Tibetans back their freedom and agree to accept the Dalai Lama on their territory.

“If they do that, I would be very happy to go myself and bring these two Chinese heads to put them in the Summer Palace in Beijing. It’s obviously blackmail but I accept that.”

Are you kidding me?! I have to agree with Xinhua here in saying that that is an incredibly stupid thing to say. First, you cannot mix two political messages together like that (even though it is oft practiced), especially with blackmail and by using cultural relics as a bargaining chip. Second, what does this guy know about Tibet? If, in the case that China agreed and it got its freedom, how would it run itself? Is it in a state where it can effectively govern its people?

I’m not going to get into it, but I hate when Westerners blindly tout “Tibetan freedom” when they don’t even know what it entails. I’m not saying that the situation isn’t deserving of attention, it just needs to be approached with caution and awareness.

Edit: ChinaSMACK covers Chinese reactions to the auctioning of the relics.

CCTV Fire in Beijing

13 February 2009

As most of the world knows by now, part of the CCTV complex (Mandarin Oriental Hotel, TVCC) burst into flames after an illegal fireworks show on February 9.

The building ablaze as seen from my apartment window

The aftermath

Only a skeleton remains

Official business (note how the official/guard has three walkie-talkies)

A few thoughts:

  • If something like this happened in the U.S., CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, local news, the Twitterati, everyone would be on it. CCTV, on the other hand, is infamous for controlling what news gets broadcasted, though it is clear that with the Internet, news dissemination has become increasingly difficult. As the fire blazed into its third hour, my friend and I turned on CCTV to look for any breaking news regarding a fire. Nothing. Chinese Lantern Festival performances, sports, talk shows, television series, commercials. What if there had been people in that building? How would the news broadcasting companies (including Xinhua) reacted? What were they worried about in the first place?
  • I’m a little worried that, if a fireman died from toxic fume/smoke inhalation, how will the rest of us be affected? Granted, he was on-site and probably inhaling a lot of it, but the smoke lingered and floated around Beijing for the next 24 hours or so. Is anyone looking into it?
  • I’m hoping that the defiant CCTV officials who ruined a building, threatened public safety (for the time being and possibly long-run, too), and thought they could get away with it are punished accordingly.
  • Wondering if this is considered a big blow to state-run media company, as many Chinese netizens have been ridiculing CCTV over the many ironies and catastrophes surrounding the event. Did CCTV get what they deserved?

I can’t wait until reconstruction (if there will be any), because that means DEMOLITION.

Patriot or Traitor?

27 December 2008

I was listening to a Radio Free Asia podcast about Charter 08 and heard this quote by City University of Hong Kong Professor Yushuo Zheng: “这些…异见分子，其实他们也是爱国的，就是提出不同的意见.” This translates roughly to: “These activists, they are actually patriotic, but they are just putting forward different viewpoints/suggestions.”

It used to be that the majority of Chinese people were apathetic or ignorant about politics, but now more and more are becoming interested and active in politics. However, while all of the politically active/vocal Chinese people are patriotic and nationalistic, they are polarized between neoconservatives and liberals.

Neoconservatives in China tend to support the current government, distrust foreign states (e.g., Japan, Western democracies), and promote the territorial and political sovereignty of China (e.g., Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang). The New Yorker wrote a very interesting article this summer about Chinese neocons. It profiled one man in particular, Tang Jie, who defends China against criticism, opposes Western political ideals, and supposedly represents the many ?? (angry youth) whose presence seems to increase as China continues to develop. The article seems to show a general trend of Chinese youth who believe that foreign countries have agendas against China’s rise, which incites a nationalistic and defensive reaction.

Here is another example of nationalistic Chinese students reciting a poem titled?2009?????(“2009, Go China!”), written by their teachers. Lyrics (transcribed/translated by China Digital Times) include lines such as:

Lead: Earthquakes, shifting back and forth like the positions of Sarkozy, with his dirty tricks, trying to shake the great China
Lead: Did China retreat?
All: No. The Shenzhou-7 launched. We are victorious!
Lead: Pathetic Europe will never stop the insurmountable force of our great dynasty
All: Just the aftershocks from the earthquake would destroy France!
甲：地震，像萨科奇的立场，用猥琐的伎俩，摇晃着巍巍中华。
甲：中国退缩了吗？
全：没有！神七飞天了！我们胜利啦！
甲：瘦瘦的欧罗巴，挡不住天朝的金戈铁马，
全：地震的余波也能把法兰西催垮！

Lead: Do not waver, do not slow down, do not make big changes
Lead: Do not change the flag, Do not turn back
All: Step ruthlessly over all anti-China forces
甲：不动摇、不懈怠、不折腾
乙：不改旗、不易帜、不回头
全：将反华者狠狠的踏在脚下

Naturally, the government most often sides with those who defend its own actions, and most of the time, liberal or pro-democracy activists are not on that side. Even though Professor Zheng said that Charter 08 represents a different viewpoint of how to reform Chinese politics, in the eyes of the Central Party, it is interpreted as a challenge to CPC rule. Thus, they will take any measure necessary to mitigate the threat. It is unfortunate that they so swiftly dismiss and destroy any vestige of protest or dissatisfaction with the central government, because I do believe that the CPC can learn from the suggestions that intellectuals offer and improve the condition of their country, too.

In related news, when I tried to Google the drafter of Charter 08 (I am omitting his name to prevent my website from getting blocked), I got this immediately (usually if a website is blocked, it “times out,” meaning it takes about 30 seconds and then shows up as a network time out):

I know that I can easily bypass this obstacle via proxy, but I don’t really understand the government’s objective in blocking websites. Perhaps research has shown that most people are just too lazy to take the extra step and access the site via proxy?

Epic Battle: East Versus West

27 December 2008

Last week, the central government blocked access to the New York Times. Then a few days later, unblocked access. No one really knows why, but personally I think it has something to do with negative coverage of China on the website. Right after access is restored, the Times publishes an article about releasing a political dissident in China. The site hasn’t been blocked again, but I thought it was ironic that:

a. the Times posts a politically sensitive article after it was blocked for political reasons
b. the indirectly anti-China article was surrounded by a pro-China advertisement:

 
According to the Shanghaiist, these ads are paid for by the Chinese government to spread their interpretation of Tibetan history and development. 

I wonder how East-West tensions will escalate (or ease) as a new President transitions into power, as the financial crisis continues, and as China transitions into post-Olympics 2009.

In Your Face, Wall Street….Maybe?

18 November 2008

I started writing an entry about the financial crisis in September (okay, “started” is an overstatement, I just came up with a title), just when everyone thought it was peaking, or at least becoming apparent to everyone. But there were so many news articles, op-eds, and blog posts about it, I couldn’t make one point that hadn’t already been mentioned. So it just sat in my Drafts, waiting for the day when I’d have something to say.

In August and September of this year, when all the newspapers and magazines featured cover stories with photos of laid off bankers walking out of Lehman Brothers, of stock markets plummeting, and of traders freaking out, I reveled at the expense of all those greedy Wall Street bankers who, in order to make a pretty penny, approved and executed some outright ridiculous, illogical transactions. I also felt triumphant that, despite pressure from Brown’s career services (which seemed only to push us towards corporate careers), I did not sell out to all the big businesses that flooded to campus last fall.  How do you like them apples, Ivy Leaguers? Finally, they can suffer, too.

Who am I kidding, they’ll all be [financially] better off than I would ever be. I’m just jealous of their flossy flossy lives. Can I get a little monetary love here?

On a more serious note, I soon realised that in the end, sure, some i-bankers peril, but the crisis hits hardest for those who aren’t making over $100,000 a year. For example, it affects people who, because of the instability of the financial market, choose not to purchase flowers at my mother’s shop. The lack of consumer spending is eroding confidence in markets, which snowballs into wider implications for our national, and international markets. And while I wish Congress didn’t pass the $700 billion bailout plan so the companies who fucked things up in the first place could decide how to clean up this mess, that’s not how the world works.

Tom Friedman said it well:

We need a leader who can look the country in the eye and say clearly: “We have not seen this before. There are only two choices now, folks: doing everything we can to shore up banks and homeowners or risk a systemic meltdown.”

Yes, that may mean rescuing some bankers who don’t deserve rescuing, while also helping prudent bankers who were doing the right things. And, yes, that may mean rescuing reckless home buyers who never should have taken out mortgages and now can’t pay them back, while not aiding people who saved prudently and are still meeting their mortgage payments.

No, it’s not fair. But fairness is not on the menu anymore. We will deal with that later. Right now we need to throw everything we can at this problem to make sure this recession doesn’t spiral down into a depression. This is no time for half-measures.

Look What I Get To Live In!

17 November 2008


(image of bicyclists in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square via nytimes)

The UN Environment Program released a report last Thursday (side note: good typography, color choices, UN!) about the thick clouds of smog and soot over Asia and the likely effects it has on health, food security, and environmental changes. Due to the unprecedented nature of these noxious brown clouds, the exact consequences of their presence is not confirmed. Regardless of the consequences, it seems like countries are dilly-dallying around until the human/environmental toll is too hard to ignore, which may be years away. By then it will be too late. The world needs to get on this shit, pronto. And seriously this time.

On a related note, though I may not be dying, I am still suffering. Now that I have finished consuming about 200 pills in the past two weeks, I don’t feel much better. I don’t really want to continue taking these pills. For one, I can’t bring myself to trust Western medicine produced in China. Second, I don’t like eating too many antibiotics over a long period of time. I mean, what if I created a mutant bacteria and created the next Avian Flu? Anyways, every time I work out or climb a shit ton of stairs, my throat constricts and I can’t breathe. I still have phelgm that impedes my breathing, but it’s so deep that I can’t cough it up. I wonder how I will survive in Beijing.

So while the world is working on fixing itself, and while I’m still living in China, I think it’s time for me to invest in a gas mask. I wonder if they have them in neon pink, yellow, and blue (Chinese hipsters?).

Yes We Can!

5 November 2008

One of my classes here in Harbin focuses on Chinese national security strategies and diplomacy. I have read article after article written by Chinese scholars who have criticized the way the United States has conducted international affairs in the 21st century. At first I was defensive. The words, although not directly addressing me, hit a soft spot. I argued, “No, there is no way that we would actively pursue hegemony at the expense of other countries.” But when I take a step back I realise how other countries must perceive our actions.

I felt cheated that people perceived America and Americans by the way George W. Bush and his administration conducted themselves in Washington and abroad. It is hard to convince people otherwise that not all of us are like (or even like) Bush given all they see and hear in the news, on television, and even in scholarly articles.

But, today, I couldn’t be prouder to be an American citizen. I will have a President who represents what I stand for. I am ready for change, as the past eight years of my life–my entire youth–have been tainted by the shadow of an inept leader and a conniving administration.

Obama’s presence and speeches often move me to tears. His words are so invigorating, selfless but responsible, uniting.

We may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction — towards a better future. (18 March 2008)

His political vision of a united and progressive America moves me, and he speaks candidly about the problems we as a nation face. He understands the difficulty and magnitude of these challenges, and accepts that he may not be able to solve them all. His personal history also inspires me. That an African-American with a humble past but an extraordinary passion can really change the world cannot epitomize the American Dream any more perfectly.

Although I am oceans away from where I wish I was last night, I could still hear the shouts of elation, see the smiles of relief and euphoria, feel the warmth of tears of so many Americans. I’m so completely drenched with optimism and hope that things will, indeed, change.

Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

Harbin’s “Fog”

29 October 2008

On October 17, the “fog” was unusually heavy, and I couldn’t figure out why. All I knew was that I was glad to be leaving Harbin for 9 days. I should have taken a photo of what the sky looks like on a normal and polluted day. But I stumbled upon this air quality reading from the SEPA website:


The red line is Harbin.

For those of you who can’t read it, it says that Harbin’s AQI is: TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-THREE. 2-7-3.

Here are the Air Quality Index (AQI) ratings:

  • 0-50 Good is usually green
  • 51-100 Moderate is usually yellow
  • 101-150 Unhealthy for sensitive groups is usually orange
  • 151-200 Unhealthy is usually red
  • 201-300 Very unhealthy is usually purple

I think they chose the color purple because that’s what color you turn into after breathing dirty air for a long time. I still wonder what caused such heavy pollution in Harbin that day, though I would guess it could be the coal plants firing up to start government regulated heating.

There Really Might As Well Be Melamine in Oxygen

8 October 2008

Once word broke out that liquid milk had traces of melamine, I knew all liquid milk was done for. But what I didn’t think about was all of the food products that China makes that have milk in them. Not long after, White Rabbit candies were being pulled off store shelves across the globe. Then, investigative reports reveal that melamine usage has been “rampant” in the dairy industry. If that wasn’t mind-jostling enough, WSJ reports that Cadbury chocolates have melamine (as well as snacks like Oreos, Snickers). Oh wait, now Ritz crackers and Lipton teas are also tainted. My father sent me an e-mail that named all of the products and brand names affected by the melamine crisis (at least 30 different products, 30 different brand names).

It’s already pretty messed up that government officials munch on pure, organic food while letting the masses suffer (population control conspiracy, anyone?). But are they the only ones to blame for the scandal? I see some blame on every level of the manufacturing chain.

First, many milk farmers are often pressured to satisfy the growing demand for milk from consumers, while they also face decreased profits from government-induced price decreases. How are they to make more milk when they cannot proportionally increase the number of cows they have to meet demand? Farmers aren’t notorious for being rich themselves, how do we know how well they’re feeding their cows? A lack of modernization of farming supplies may also affect their milk turnout.

Second, those who make melamine for industrial use should know who their customers are, and what they intend on using melamine for. Though I see the possible counterargument for this (is it their job to know who they sell to? Money is money), after the dog food scandal last year, the melamine producers should be a little more careful about who they sell their product to. And perhaps melamine producers are also looking for

Third, companies who have known about the addition of melamine since December 2007 kept hush-hush about the issue. They ignored complaints by (or offered hush money to) individuals who suspected something wrong with their milk. They’re rumored to have pressured farmers to produce more milk to meet demand, and they’re suspected to have had connections with melamine producers.

And lastly, the central government’s weak grasp on their quality control initiatives are to blame. Who the hell gives out “free passes” for quality control tests? It sounds like an open invitation to adulterate food for more profit. I am also disappointed that the Chinese government never does anything until something explosively bad happens. Then, they go 100% all out to control the problem, but within a year, things go back to the way they used to be. They will be waiting for the next public health disaster to sprout up.

A New York Times editorial by Bee Wilson divulged information about America’s dirty food past and contrasted it with present-day China. She argued that places experiencing rapid growth and seeking wealth are often look for (harmful) alternatives to meet demand, to make more money. I hope that China’s food system–from the bottom up and from the top down–gets better soon.

In other news, I just bought a carton of Mengniu milk produced on September 18. Hopefully, the milk gods are on my side…at least for the time being.

The United States of Mind

3 October 2008

There is an interesting WSJ article profiling certain personality traits across states. Pretty interesting, and makes me wonder whether students who live in many different states are affected by their environments. And, how much of what that region’s environment sticks with them. Personally, I have definitely been affected by the cynicism and neuroticism of New England and New York, though I am still undoubtedly a Californian. My personality sporadically jumps from one to another: sometimes I am enraged by the amount of people on the streets and on public transportation, but at other times am completely unbothered and people watch. I micromanage, but I also just go with whatever comes my way. Whether or not this attests to different regional temperaments, I do not know. But the article is still worth a glance.

 

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