Politics

posts on political issues relevant to Greater China

Core socialist values in song and dance

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Source: Sinosphere, NYT (9/1/16)
China’s ‘Core Socialist Values,’ the Song-and-Dance Version
By KIKI ZHAO

BEIJING — The 12 “core socialist values” are memorized by schoolchildren, featured in college entrance exams, printed on stamps and lanterns, and splashed on walls across China. Now they have made their way into 20 song-and-dance routines that the authorities in Hunan Province plan to promote to the country’s millions of “square dancers,” the mostly middle-aged and older women who gather in public squares to perform in unison. Continue reading Core socialist values in song and dance →

HK movement contests Beijing at the polls

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Source: NYT (9/1/16)
Hong Kong Independence Movement Contests Beijing at the Polls
By MICHAEL FORSYTHE and ALAN WONG

Sixtus Leung, known as Baggio, is running for Legislative Council as a member of the Youngspiration party. He is part of a new, youthful force in Hong Kong that is on the cusp of acquiring a measure of actual power. CreditBilly H.C. Kwok for The New York Times

HONG KONG — Sixtus Leung sees no hope for Hong Kong if it sticks with its current political system, which has governed it since the former British colony reverted to Chinese rule in 1997.

So he is working to overturn that system — by becoming part of it. Continue reading HK movement contests Beijing at the polls →

Entertainment news ban

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Source: SCMP (8/30/16)
Beijing bans entertainment news that promotes Western lifestyles and celebrities, or pokes fun at Chinese values
By Liu Zhen

Chinese news organisations face punishments, including losing their production licences, if they violate rules banning entertainment news that ridicules traditional Chinese values. Photo: AFP

Beijing has forbidden reports of entertainment news that promote “Western lifestyles”, poke fun at traditional Chinese values and cultural classics, such as mythical heroes, or publish details of celebrities’ love affairs.
Continue reading Entertainment news ban →

New face of Chinese nationalism

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Source: Tea Leaf Nation, Foreign Policy (8/25/16)
The New Face of Chinese Nationalism
‘Little pink’ web users are jumping onto Twitter and Instagram to call out enemies of the state.

The New Face of Chinese Nationalism

The just-completed 2016 Rio Olympics didn’t just mark the ascendance of major Chinese athletes like swimmer and internet darling Fu Yuanhui — it also showed, in real time, how Chinese nationalism can affect the global online dialogue. During the games, Australian gold medalist swimmer Mack Horton called Chinese competitor Sun Yang a “drug cheat”; in response, Chinese netizens flooded Horton’s accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram — all of which are blocked in China and can only be accessed with censorship circumvention tools — to demand an apology. (Chinese fans were in such a rush to bombard Horton’s social media presence that some of them even misspelled his name and ended up attacking Mark Horton, an English IT worker, instead.) Continue reading New face of Chinese nationalism →

Chinese dynasty with a 21st century outlook

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Source: The Globe and Mail (8/27/16)
A Chinese dynasty with a 21st-century outlook
Be prepared, warns Nathan VanderKlippe, as Justin Trudeau and other world leaders converge on China: The People’s Republic is suddenly seeking inspiration from its glorious imperial past
By NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE

Some of the hundreds of posters depicting Chinese President Xi Jinping that recently coated a building in Shanghai: An imperial personality in the making?

Some of the hundreds of posters depicting Chinese President Xi Jinping that recently coated a building in Shanghai: An imperial personality in the making? ALY SONG/REUTERS

Under the clear blue sky his country had manufactured for the occasion (by closing factories for miles), Xi Jinping stood stony-faced on an enormous red carpet to receive a clutch of world leaders. One by one, statesmen from near and far walked up to the Chinese President to shake hands on the occasion of his first military parade last September. Standing next to his wife, Peng Liyuan, Mr. Xi barely spoke, his face opening into only the thinnest of smiles.

It was hardly the warm greeting of a host. His bearing recalled something else entirely. In the Forbidden City, the centre of Chinese imperial power since the 15th century, Mr. Xi wore a double-pocketed Mao jacket but had the air of an emperor, coolly accepting foreign tributaries. Continue reading Chinese dynasty with a 21st century outlook →

Public sentiment guidance plans

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Source: China Digital Times (8/23/16)
A Leaked Glimpse of “Public Sentiment Guidance” Plans
By Anne Henochowitz

舆情控管 01A leaked voice message and series of screenshots from WeChat Enterprise appears to reveal a “public sentiment guidance” meeting by members of the so-called “Fifty Cent Party.” Some of the screen names involved were leaked earlier this summer on a spreadsheet of “payouts and bonuses” for public sentiment guides. The chat screenshots, which CDT has translated below, were posted to Weibo on August 14 by Zonghengsihai67 (@纵横四海67). They remain online. The discussion touches on payment and promotion, an upcoming group trip to the seaside town of Beidaihe, and how to interact with “radical” netizens. Some team members, apparently part-time contract workers, ask about getting an “official position” (正式编制), or gaining full-time work. Continue reading Public sentiment guidance plans →

Crackdown on dissent could lead to unrest, UN adviser

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Source: NYT (8/23/16)
China’s Crackdown on Dissent Could Lead to Unrest, U.N. Adviser Says
By JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ

BEIJING — An adviser to the United Nations has sharply criticized President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on dissent in China, warning on Tuesday that the Communist Party’s tight grip on civil society was undermining basic rights and risking mass unrest.

The adviser, Philip G. Alston, said that the party’s dominance of the legal system had left Chinese citizens with few avenues to complain about issues like pollution and inequality. He dismissed the process for filing grievances as “window dressing,” and said party officials had suppressed meaningful policy debates. Continue reading Crackdown on dissent could lead to unrest, UN adviser →

Happy birthday, Uncle Toad

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Source: SCMP (8/17/16)
‘Happy birthday, Uncle Toad’ — fanbase shows its love for Jiang Zemin
Pop art tributes appear on Chinese social media congratulating the former leader as he turns 90, but messages seem to carry jab at the current, more formal president
By Jun Mai

Some of the online tributes to former leader Jiang Zemin on his birthday. Graphic: SCMP

He may have been ridiculed while in power but former Chinese president Jiang Zemin has inspired a wave of nostalgic political pop art on his 90th birthday, with many seeing the outpouring as an indirect jab at present policies.

“Happy birthday, Uncle Toad! One more second!” a WeChat user wrote on Wednesday under a cartoon of a rectangular pair of glasses in the shape of a “90”. Continue reading Happy birthday, Uncle Toad →

Yanhuang chunqiu revamped

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Source: Sinosphere, NYT (8/17/16)
Revamped Chinese History Journal Welcomes Hard-Line Writers
By CHRIS BUCKLEY

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Wang Yanjun, who was ousted as deputy editor of Yanhuang Chunqiu, with the latest issue of the journal on Tuesday, which still shows his name and that of other editors removed by its new managers. Several former editors are trying to sue the journal’s government sponsor to wrest back control. Credit: Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

BEIJING — For most of its 25 years, the Chinese history magazine Yanhuang Chunqiu has been loved by moderate liberals and detested with equal passion by devotees of Mao Zedong, who reviled it as a refuge for heretical criticisms of the Chinese leader and the Communist Party.

But in a sign of how sharply ideological winds have turned under President Xi Jinping, officials who recently took control of the magazine have wooed Maoist and nationalist writers who long scorned the magazine. Several well-known hard-line polemicists attended a meeting with the new managers on Monday. Continue reading Yanhuang chunqiu revamped →

Court orders writer to apologize over Langya Mt. story

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Source: China Real Time, WSJ (8/16/16)
Lost Appeal: Court Orders a Writer to Apologize Over Wartime Story
By Josh Chin

Hong Zhenkuai, left, stands with a local guide on a granite cliff on northern China's Langya Mountain that five Chinese soldiers are said to have jumped from in 1941 to avoid being captured alive by Japanese troops.

ENLARGE Hong Zhenkuai, left, stands with a local guide on a granite cliff on northern China’s Langya Mountain that five Chinese soldiers are said to have jumped from in 1941 to avoid being captured alive by Japanese troops. PHOTO: JOSH CHIN/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

A Chinese writer has been ordered to apologize publicly for questioning one of China’s best-known stories of wartime heroism after he lost an appeal in a Beijing court.

In a decision that fell on the anniversary of Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II, the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court on Monday upheld a libel ruling against the writer, Hong Zhenkuai, for a pair of articles he wrote in 2013 questioning certain details in the “Five Heroes of Langya Mountain.” Continue reading Court orders writer to apologize over Langya Mt. story →

HK protest leaders sentenced to service

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Source: NYT (8/15/16)
Hong Kong Protest Leaders Sentenced to Community Service
点击查看本文中文版 Read in Chinese
By AUSTIN RAMZY and CHARLOTTE YANG

Video: Hong Kong Activists Sentenced; Joshua Wong and Alex Chow spoke to the news media in Hong Kong on Monday. They, along with Nathan Law, were sentenced for their involvement in a demonstration that led to wider protests two years ago.

HONG KONG — Two Hong Kong activists were sentenced to community service on Monday and another was given a suspended jail term for their involvement in a demonstration that led to large pro-democracy street protests two years ago.

One of the activists, Joshua Wong, 19, the student leader who was convicted in July of unlawful assembly, was sentenced to 80 hours of community service. Continue reading HK protest leaders sentenced to service →

Ai Weiwei’s animal heads

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Source: NYT (8/10/16)
Ai Weiwei’s Animal Heads Offer Critique of Chinese Nationalism
点击查看本文中文版 Read in Chinese
By EDWARD WONG

The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei posing next to a sculpture from Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, one of a set of 12 bronze animals inspired by figures looted from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing in the 19th century. CreditHans Klaus Techt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

PRINCETON, N.J. — On summer days at Princeton University, children splash in a fountain next to an unlikely piece of art: 12 large bronze heads of animals sitting atop poles in a line.

The heads are arrayed between the fountain and the hall of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. The 10-foot installations range from the mythic (a dragon) to the prosaic (a rabbit and a snake). They are the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac, and the Chinese tour groups common here in the summer often stop to take photographs. Visitors delight in posing with the animal for their birth year. Continue reading Ai Weiwei’s animal heads →

Dystopian fictions in the time of Trump

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Source: TLS Blog (8/3/16)
Dystopian fictions in the time of Trump: A letter from America
By JEFFREY WASSERSTROM

Dystopias - book covers

I’m not sure why others read dystopian novels, but I know why I turn to them – and why, thanks to Donald Trump’s candidacy, I’ve recently found myself abandoning ones midway through that had come to me highly recommended. For me, the allure of thought-provoking dystopian novels – from classics such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) to powerful recent works such as Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2014) – is twofold. They provide new ways of thinking about contemporary problems, yet offer a degree of escape from them. The difficulty now is that dystopian works of art – films as well as novels – don’t give me relief from a singularly distressing news cycle, dominated both by reports of horrific violence and by an American election that has inspired more conjuring of nightmarish scenarios than any past one. Continue reading Dystopian fictions in the time of Trump →

Tsai Ing-wen apologizes to aborigines

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Source: Sinosphere, NYT (8/1/16)
Taiwan’s President Apologizes to Aborigines for Centuries of Injustice
点击查看本文中文版 Read in Chinese


HONG KONG — President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan offered a formal apology on Monday to aboriginal peoples for centuries of “pain and mistreatment,” and she promised to take concrete steps to rectify a history of injustice.

In a ceremony at the presidential office in Taipei attended by aboriginal community leaders, she said that although Taiwan had made efforts to end discrimination against hundreds of thousands of indigenous people, a formal apology was now necessary.

Continue reading Tsai Ing-wen apologizes to aborigines →

Zhao Ziyang Collected Works published in HK

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Source: NYT (7/28/16)
Purged Chinese Leader’s Inside Look at Communist Leadership
点击查看本文中文版 Read in Chinese
By CHRIS BUCKLEY

29CHINAZHAO-web1-master768

A newly published collection of works by Zhao Ziyang, the party leader ousted in 1989, along with his photograph, on display at a book fair in Hong Kong this month. Credit: Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

BEIJING — Retired and dead Chinese Communist Party leaders who join the official pantheon are usually feted with the publication of their collected works. Generally, the fat volumes of speeches and writings are rarely read by anyone except the occasional scholar and party members ordered to study them.

But that honor has been denied to Zhao Ziyang, the party leader ousted in 1989, when Deng Xiaoping, his powerful elder, sided with conservatives who blamed Mr. Zhao for letting student protesters get out of control. Mr. Zhao died in 2005, still an official pariah under house arrest, and even now his name is rarely mentioned in the party-run news media, and his speeches and writings are hard to track down in China, where their circulation was banned after his fall. Continue reading Zhao Ziyang Collected Works published in HK →