China

Thousands of protesters rallied in Kunming on Thursday to oppose the construction of an oil refinery operated by China National Petroleum Corp. (PetroChina). The protests, the second this month, were mostly peaceful but were met with a heavy police presence, and a few scuffles and arrests were reported. From the Los Angeles Times:

The protest crowds Thursday were estimated to number as many as 2,500. Scores of uniformed and riot police looked on and sometimes scuffled with demonstrators, according to photos taken at the scene and comments posted on China’s social media. The rally was mostly peaceful but did not disperse until early evening, shortly after the mayor appeared and addressed the protesters.

Kunming officials have said that the refinery project by the state-owned giant China National Petroleum Corp. will meet environmental standards, but the city and company have refused to make public the environmental impact report.

Residents fear that the plant will pollute the area’s air and water, as well as produce large amounts of paraxylene, a carcinogenic chemical.

The march in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, is the latest in a string of protests in China over worries about the environmental and health costs of development. [Source]

The lack of transparent information about the project has been a primary complaint of protesters. Officials have stated that paraxylene (PX) will not be used at the refinery, but protesters are distrustful of the government without seeing the environmental impact report. Domestic media has also been ordered not to conduct independent reporting on the project, according to a recent directive from the Central Propaganda Department. From CNN:

Several days after a May 4 protest, the Kunming mayor joined executives from the state China National Petroleum Corp. and the Yuntianhua Group for a joint news conference.

“The government will call off the project if most of our citizens say no to it,” said Mayor Li Wenrong, according to Xinhua.

The provincial general manager of China National Petroleum Corp. has said the refinery will not use the chemical.

“The project has no PX facilities, nor will it produce PX products,” Hu Jingke said, according to Xinhua.

Kunming residents expressed deep distrust of government officials and the state-owned enterprises behind the refinery project. [Source]

Al Jazeera reports on the skepticism many protesters feel toward the government’s claim:

Government officials said earlier in the week that the project, being built by the powerful state company PetroChina, would meet environmental standards and was crucial to the local economy.

However, local people remain worried that the refinery, which is expected to produce up to 10 million tonnes of refined oil annually, will pollute the air and water.

[...] He Bo, a deputy with the city government, appeared at the scene and tried to reach out to protesters, inviting them for a discussion with the government.

But the official, who was followed by state media cameras, failed to find representatives of the demonstrators who were willing to talk.

He finally gave up and abandoned the scene, escorted by security agents. [Source]

The refinery is being built largely to process oil transported through a new pipeline running from Myanmar to Yunnan. These protests fit a pattern of recent citizen actions against potential pollution from large-scale industrial projects in Chinese cities. Large protests have erupted against chemical processing facilities in Dalian, Xiamen, and Shifang, Sichuan, to name just a few. In the recent issue of Dissent Magazine, Jeffrey Wasserstrom interviews Duke University anthropologist Ralph Litzinger about the upsurge in environmental activism in China in recent years and specifically about the protests in Kunming on May 4 over the planned oil refinery:

JW: One of the most recent—maybe the most recent—NIMBY protest was in Kunming, a city I know you spent a lot of time in and that I remember from my one visit there in 1987 as an unusually beautiful and slow-paced place. I realize I’ll be in a shock if I return there, since I’ve heard it has grown exponentially in recent years and no longer has the same feel of being largely untouched by the harsher aspects of urban life. What’s your take on how the city’s changed and how this recent protests fits into the picture?

RL: Kunming is indeed a place very close to my heart. I first visited Kunming in 1990. As with many cities in China, the changes there are astonishing. Frankly, some of the development has been, to my mind, misguided, if only because Kunming now looks and feels like just another generic city on development steroids. Satellite cities are popping up all around Kunming, and many of these are sites for planned chemical factories, petrochemical plants, and other industrial manufacturing operations. On the one hand, we can argue that the protests in Kunming, meant to coincide with the May Fourth anniversary (one of the most hallowed days on the Chinese political calendar, commemorating as it does a patriotic 1919 Beijing demonstration that launched a nation-wide mass movement), are evidence of a growing consciousness, seen in other cities, about industrial pollution, chemical runoff into watersheds and rivers, and the environmental and health effects of tin and copper and other heavy mental mining. [Source]

The protests are galvanized by social media, where residents share information and protest plans. Photos and reports of the protest also spread in real-time via weibo and Twitter. A CDT reader and Kunming native sent us the following photos, which she received from friends in Kunming via WeChat (Weixin). Protesters are increasingly sharing information on the WeChat cell phone messaging application to avoid the censorship on weibo and in the media:

Read more about environmental activism, including anti-PX protests in Dalian and Xiamen, via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: environmental activism, environmental protests, industrial pollution, Kunming, Kunming PX
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China Daily reported yesterday on a counterfeit condom factory busted in the southeastern province of Fujian, and two other underground factories uncovered by the police investigation :

An underground workshop producing fake brand-name condoms was busted after police found clues on an online marketplace.

Two owners of the workshop and more than 10 of their workers were detained in Jinjiang, Fujian province, during a raid on March 29, said an officer surnamed He with the city’s public security bureau.

[...]Police confiscated more than 2 million bogus condoms labeled Jissbon, Durex and Contex in the factory and its warehouse. While a knock-off prophylactic is priced at 1 yuan (16 cents), it costs less than 0.2 yuan to produce.

In February, police noticed that prices of brand-name condoms sold at a store on taobao.com, the country’s biggest e-commerce marketplace, were unreasonably low, and they bought some products to check, according to a police officer surnamed Xu with the bureau’s economic investigation team, which handled the case. After the products were proven to be fake, police took action.

[Source]

Bloomberg Businessweek’s coverage points to the government seizure of faulty imported condoms last month in Ghana, many of which were revealed to have been produced in China:

The police did not specify whether the condoms seized in the [Fujian] raid were faulty. Another recent case, however, gives reason to worry. In April, public health authorities from Ghana impounded more than 1 million substandard condoms, many of them imported from China. “When we tested these condoms, we found that they are poor quality, can burst in the course of sexual activity, and have holes which expose the users to unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease,” an official from Ghana’s Food and Drug Administration told The Guardian. The country’s FDA discovered that many of the condoms came from a factory in China’s Henan province.

[Source]

Amid China’s AIDS epidemic — fueled by drug use, the country’s vast prostitution industry, and spread widely by state-run blood collection programs in the 1990′s — public safety campaigns have encouraged the use of condoms in recent years. Consumer confidence has been sliding in China, a country riddled with food safety scandals and a major player in the global counterfeit trade.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: counterfeit goods, counterfeiting, fake goods, HIV/AIDS, proph, public health, sex education, sex industry
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The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online.

Central Propaganda Department: Without exception, do not report or comment on [information] about “Occupy Central” in Hong Kong that has not yet been unified and planned. Do not quote related information from overseas media or websites. Please strictly comply. (May 14, 2013)

中宣部：对香港“占领中环”行动一事未统一安排一律不报道、不评论，不转引境外媒体及网上相关消息。请严格遵照执行。

Protesters plan to “occupy” Central, the busy downtown of Hong Kong, in July 2014 if Hong Kong citizens do not have universal suffrage by that point. The International Herald Tribune covered Occupy Central in April, while the South China Morning Post has a page dedicated to the topic.

Guangdong Propaganda Department: On the evening of May 9, employee Wu Taihui jumped from the administrative offices of the Zhongyi Industrial Park in Dongguan. Except for [information] issued by authoritive departments, the media are to stop reporting and commenting on this incident. (May 15, 2013)

广东省委宣传部：5月9日晚东莞中意工业园行政办公楼发生的员工吴太辉坠楼事件，除权威部门发布外，各媒体不再报道，评论。

Wu, who had just been fired, was at the factory to settle his wages, according to his widow [zh].

Central Propaganda Department: The media are not to sensationalize, exaggerate, or comment on the incident in Wanning, Hainan Province in which an elementary school put female students in a hotel room overnight. You may report in an orderly manner according to information issued by authoritative departments. (May 15, 2013)

中宣部：关于海南万宁小学带女学生开房过夜一事，各媒体不炒作渲染、不评论。可依据权威部门发布的信息有序报道。

Four girls were brought to a hotel room in Wanning and sexually assaulted by their school headmaster. A government official brought another two girls to a hotel in nearby Haikou. Doctors who examined the girls reported they are still virgins, but they were bruised and appear “groggy” in surveillance footage.

CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date on CDT Chinese is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, children's rights, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, dongguan, Guangdong, Hainan, hong kong elections, Ministry of Truth, Occupy Central, occupy movement, propaganda, sexual violence, suicide
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For his latest contribution to the Hexie Farm CDT series, cartoonist Crazy Crab looks at the recent directive listing seven topics that are off-limits for academics to discuss in the classroom: “freedom of the press, a civil society, civic rights, historical mistakes committed by the Communist Party, elite cronyism, and an independent judiciary.” In this Orwellian cartoon, the leader of a “Chicken Republic” secretly issues Seven Commandments, otherwise known as the “Seven Don’t Mentions.”

Chicken Republic, by Crazy Crab of Hexie Farm:

Read more about Hexie Farm’s CDT series, including a Q&A with the anonymous cartoonist, and see all cartoons so far in the series.

[CDT owns the copyright for all cartoons in the Hexie Farm CDT series. Please do not reproduce without receiving prior permission from CDT.]

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: academic freedom, hexie farm, political cartoons
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China released the “Catalogue of Priority Industries for Foreign Investment in Central and Western China" on May 14, which is scheduled to take effect on June 10, 2013. Detailed information can be found here. Continue reading →

According to the preliminary data released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), China’s economy expanded 7.8 percent in 2012 amid the sluggish global economy, reaching RMB51.9 trillion (US$8.45 trillion). The growth rate, although the slowest since 1999, still beats the government’s 7.5 percent growth target. Continue reading →

Having long been a small player in China’s life insurance sector, Axa has seen a big change of fortune with a new partner.

Uotsuri Island

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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In the second related protest in two weeks, hundreds of people gathered on the streets in Kunming to protest the construction of an oil refinery and paraxylene (PX) plant near the city. The South China Morning Post is posting live updates from the protest:

Hundreds of people have gathered near the Yunnan provincial government’s seat to protest against the construction of a petrochemical refinery and a related paraxylene (PX) plant in Anning near the province’s capital Kunming.

Traffic has been blocked by the protest one block away from the government’s seat and rows of police have cordoned off the block.

The number of protesters is still increasing as people stuck on public buses and cars are joining, the South China Morning Post’s Li Jing reports from the scene of the protest. [Source]

On Twitter, witnesses, notably @aikunming, posted live updates as well:

#AntiPX #Kunming this protest is on the move folks. Marched south to 牌楼。security not allowing protesters to march on or thru 人民中路

— @aikunming May 16, 2013

#AntiPX #Kunming crowd larger than 1000

— @aikunming May 16, 2013

#AntiPX #Kunming protest started @ten with immediate arrest of 1.Protesters tried 2 stop police van taking away arrested. Shut down street.

— @aikunming May 16, 2013

#AntiPX #Kunming protesters try to break police lines. twitter.com/aikunming/stat…

— @aikunming May 16, 2013

#AntiPX #Kunming traffic resumes at snails pace via traffic control.Old ladies cursing plain clothes cops.

— @aikunming May 16, 2013

#AntiPX #Kunming multiple protest zones now. Perhaps effective divider conquer by police. 1000 in interesection 1000 north of intersection.

— @aikunming May 16, 2013

#AntiPX #Kunming twitter.com/aikunming/stat…

— @aikunming May 16, 2013

“Democracy! It is beginning” reads a banner at the #Kunming environmental protest. scmp.com/news/china/art… #AntiPX

— Patrick Boehler (@MrBaoPanrui) May 16, 2013

#AntiPX #Kunming new view. Protesters return to orig site. Numbers dwindle. twitter.com/aikunming/stat…

— @aikunming May 16, 2013

#AntiPX #Kunming thanks for tuning in. Protests last forever but unfortunately iPhone batteries do not. Until next time…

— @aikunming May 16, 2013

Read about the related protest on May 4.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: environmental protests, industrial pollution, Kunming, Kunming PX
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In an opinion piece in the Guardian, writer Murong Xuecun discusses the closure of his various weibo accounts and the ongoing crackdown on Internet expression in China:

Not long ago, scholar Zhang Xuezhong, Xiao Xuehui, Song Shinan and lawyer Si Weijiang all saw their Weibo accounts deleted. They each had large numbers of followers, who spread their words to an even wider audience. But all of a sudden their names have disappeared. Nobody knows why, or who ordered it, but we all know that a new round of a censorship campaign has commenced. As in 1957, 1966 and 1989, Chinese intellectuals are feeling more or less the same fear as one does before an approaching mountain storm: the scariest thing of all is not being silenced or being sent to prison; it is the sense of powerlessness and uncertainty about what comes next. There is no procedure, no standard, and not a single explanation. It’s as if you are walking into a minefield blindfolded. Not knowing where the mines are buried, you don’t know when you will be blasted to pieces.

Two days later, at 10pm on 11 May, my Weibo accounts with Sina, Tencent, NetEase, and Sohu were deleted simultaneously. When the web staff from these sites got in touch with me several minutes later, they told me more or less the same story: they were following an order from a “superior department”, whose identity they could not reveal because of a confidentiality agreement. In fact, such departments are as numerous as hairs on an ox: State Council Information Office, State Internet Information Office, Propaganda Department, Public Security Bureau, the secretary of a dignitary … Almost every department and dignitary can order internet companies to delete information and accounts while they themselves hide in the dark. Seeing speeches that trigger their ire, they can make them disappear for ever by simply picking up the telephone receiver.

I am mentally prepared for such things to happen, but when they do, I still feel dismayed and angry. I am a “big V” [verified user] on Weibo, possessing over 8.5m followers across the four web portals, and 3.96m in Sina alone. In a period of over three years, I had posted more than 1,900 Weibo messages totalling more than 200,000 words, each written with deliberation and care. In a split second, however, they were all brought to naught. [Source]

Read more by and about Murong Xuecun via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet censorship, Murong Xuecun, weibo
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Amid the ongoing Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute — a notable spell of discord in the long-strained Sino-Japanese relationship — players on both shores of the East China Sea have made recent moves stoking the flames of diplomatic resentment. Last week, People’s Daily ran a piece by establishment academics challenging Japan’s sovereignty of the Ryukyu island chain — home to Okinawa prefecture, the administrative body of the Diaoyu/Senkakus situated directly to their east. On May 8, the Wall Street Journal reported:

The People’s Daily newspaper on page nine of Wednesday’s edition ran a lengthy and winding commentary by scholars at a prominent state-run think tank that called for a “reconsideration” of the historical status of Japan’s southernmost Ryukyu island chain, which includes Okinawa. The researchers argued foreign aggression toward China during its final Qing dynasty (1644-1911) weakened it to the point where it couldn’t sufficiently oppose aggressive Japanese inroads in the broader region.

“History’s unresolved questions relating to the Ryukyu have reached a time for reconsideration,” the commentary read.

[...]The Japanese government dismissed the commentary. “There’s no doubt that [Okinawa] belongs to Japan historically and internationally,” said Japanese government spokesman Yoshihide Suga, describing the views expressed in the commentary as “completely out of the question.”

[Source]

Japan protested the suggestion that Okinawa may rightfully be Beijing’s territory, an act that was chastised in reiterative English-language commentary from the Global Times on May 11:

The article stirred strong protest from Japan, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe saying Tokyo “must voice its position to the world” by rejecting China’s “inappropriate claim.” The US Department of State expressed support for Japan’s sovereignty over Okinawa.

Japan’s overreaction toward the suggestion made by two Chinese scholars in State media mirrors its lack of confidence. In 1971, the US unilaterally handed over control of the Ryukyu Islands to Tokyo. There has always been a legal basis to challenge this illegal act.

[...]If Japan ultimately chooses antagonism with China, Beijing should consider changing its current stance and revisit the Ryukyu issue as an unsolved historical problem.

[Source]

As Li Guoqiang and Zhang Haipeng, the scholars who penned the People’s Daily article, were studying historical documents to strengthen the case against Japan’s soveriengty over the Ryukyu chain, Japanese politicians enraged many in China by defending certain Japanese war atrocities, and evoking the occurrence of others. Malcolm Moore reports for The Telegraph:

[...O]n Monday, a regional Japanese politician [Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto] reignited a long-running dispute by suggesting that the hundreds of thousands of women abducted from China, Korea and the Philippines and forced to work as sex slaves for the Japanese army - known as “comfort” women – was a “necessary” measure during the Second World War.

Subsequently, footage emerged on Tuesday of Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, posing with his thumbs up inside the cockpit of a T4 training jet used by the Blue Impulse flying squad, Japan’s equivalent of the Red Arrows.

On the outside of the jet, however, the number 731 was painted prominently. Largely forgotten in Japan, the number still stirs painful memories in China.

Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army was the covert chemical and biological weapons team that gathered Chinese men, women and subjected them to vivisection without anaesthesia.

[Source]

Twenty-five Okinawan women’s groups issued a joint statement demanding an apology for Hashimoto’s comments on the necessity of “comfort women”.

Following the galling comments from Japan, a hawkish Chinese military official weighed in on Okinawa’s sovereignty, echoing the view earlier expressed in the People’s Daily. The South China Morning Post reports:

Luo Yuan, a People’s Liberation Army two-star general, has said that Japan could not rightfully claim sovereignty over the islands, because they had started paying tribute to China half a millenium before they had done so to Japan.

The islands had started paying tribute to China in 1372, the general said in an interview with China News Service on Tuesday. Only in 1872, 500 years later, did Japan exploit China’s weakness to force the Ryukuyu Islands into submission, he said.

[...] The general, known for his outspoken nationalism, reasoned that the Ryukyuan people had closer ethnic and cultural ties to coastal China than they had to Japan. Their rulers were vassals of the Chinese court, he argued.

[Source]

An article on this most recent flare in Sino-Japanese diplomacy from The Guardian notes that China’s move to dispute the sovereignty of Okinawa may work against any desire to hold formal talks on the Diaoyu/Senkakus:

Analysts said China was mistaken if it believed that provoking Japan over Okinawa would add momentum to its claims to the Senkaku islands. “If China’s goal is to hold talks with Japan over the Senkakus, articles like these are counterproductive,” M Taylor Fravel, a Chinese foreign policy expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Associated Press.

“As a result, Japan has an even stronger incentive now to stand firm with China and not hold talks.”

[Source]

For more on China’s relationship with Japan, the recent re-ignition of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute, or other territorial and maritime disputes, see prior CDT coverage.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: comfort women, diaoyu islands, diplomacy, east china sea, Japan relations, maritime disputes, senkaku islands, Shinzo Abe, territorial disputes
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The Arctic Council granted observer status to six nations, including China; Macau casino operator Galaxy said its earnings rose, fueled by record wins from gamblers in the world's largest gambling market.

More than two-thirds of business leaders say in a survey that the Asian country would reach or pull ahead of the continent in innovation by 2023

A roundup of online political cartoons from the past two weeks. Click any image to launch gallery view.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Drawing the News, Liu Ping, Liu Tienan, Luo Changping, political cartoons, political humor, Xi Jinping, Yuan Liya, Zhu Ling
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The clearest wager on the US comes from the bond market., as the 10-year US Treasury yield has jumped from 1.6 to almost 2 per cent this month

The Word of the Week comes from China Digital Space’s Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon, a glossary of terms created by Chinese netizens and frequently encountered in online political discussions. These are the words of China’s online “resistance discourse,” used to mock and subvert the official language around censorship and political correctness.

Left: “My dad is a director!” Right: “My dad is a section chief!”

拼爹 (pīn diē): compare fathers

This term is a product of the growing disparity between the rich and poor in a society with limited social mobility. Instead of competing based on ability or academic accomplishments, many feel that “comparing fathers” gives a more accurate prediction of future success.

Many Chinese young people with powerful fathers are known as rich second generation. In the past few years, there have been many incidents of rich second generation youths relying on their fathers’ wealth or power to avoid taking responsibility for their wrongdoing.

Most famously, in 2010, Li Qiming drove drunk and ran over a college student, killing her. When he exited the car, he famously declared, “My father is Li Gang,” and asked who dared sue him. His declaration later became one of the year’s most viral Internet memes. More recently, Li Tianyi, the son of a general in the People’s Liberation Army, was arrested for the gang rape of his teacher; it was widely believed that the younger Li felt he could get away with such acts because of his father’s status and wealth.

Many Chinese who “compare fathers” do not do so in such a criminal way; they merely enjoy some preferential treatment and have more opportunities than those without connections. However, when young people like Li Qiming and Li Tianyi “compare fathers,” they are often described as being 坑爹 kēng diē, or “father-hurting,” a term originally used to refer more broadly to unsatisfactory circumstances.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: second-generation rich, word of the week
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Premier Li Keqiang warns that China faces an unprecedented challenge in finding jobs for a record number of university graduates

As of May 14, the following search terms are blocked on Sina Weibo (not including the “search for user” function).

Lawyers “Surround and Watch” Black Jails: On May 13, 11 rights defense lawyers were detained and beaten for attempting to visit a black jail in Ziyang, Sichuan Province. Since then, the weibo accounts of several public intellectuals have been shuttered, including writer Murong Xuecun‘s.

• Ziyang black jail (资阳黑监狱)
• surround and watch+black jails (围观+黑监狱)
• rights defense lawyers (维权律师)

Other:
• Wang Bu (王补): The former Beijing Public Security Bureau Chief of Scientific Research, who passed away in 1997. On the “Wuxi Economy” TV program, Zhu Ling’s father recently disclosed that Mr. Wang gave his notes on Zhu Ling’s case to Zhu’s parents before his death.
• red bandits (赤匪)
• red bandits (红匪)
• gong bandits (Gong匪): Alternate writing of 共匪 gōng fēi, i.e. communist bandits (共产党匪).
• gongfei

All Chinese-language words are tested using simplified characters. The same terms in traditional characters occasionally return different results.

Browse all of CDT’s collected sensitive words in this bilingual Google spreadsheet.

CDT Chinese runs a project that crowd-sources filtered keywords on Sina Weibo search. CDT independently tests the keywords before posting them, but some searches later become accessible again. We welcome readers to contribute to this project so that we can include the most up-to-date information. To add words, check out the form at the bottom of CDT Chinese’s latest sensitive words post.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: black jails, censorship, Internet censorship, Ministry of Truth, rights defense, Sensitive Words Series, weibo, Zhu Ling
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Taipei steps up its naval patrols in the South China Sea after rejecting Manila’s apology for the fatal shooting of a Taiwanese fisherman

Five other countries also gain observer status but a decision on the EU was deferred amid Canadian concern over its ban on seal product imports