Contemporary China

[Anonymous]

From now until the completion of the Para Olympics, Beijing drivers will drive their cars on alternate days to cut down on emissions. Starting last Monday, owners of cars with license plates ending with odd numbers could drive, on Tuesday, cars with plates ending in even numbers could be on the road. Beijing opened 3 new subways last weekend. For over a month, cars and trucks from areas outside Beijing have been denied access to the city. The manufacturing industry stopped all production two months ago. All building and construction is on hiatus as well.

The smog emissions have dropped since 1 July, but air quality is still poor when measured by Western standards.

[Anonymous]

I was googling the USC China Institute and found this interesting 2007 article with a nice caricature of Clay:

http://www.lacitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/?id=6013&IssueNum=219

[Anonymous]

In the NYTimes today, 18 Oct 2008, is the article, "Wary of Islam, China Tightens a Vise of Rules" is a piece about the imposition of rules and ability of people to adehere to their muslim faith.
Communist Party members are barred from entering a mosque.
The government says the rules are a life and death struggle.
Interesting reading as China changes and grows.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/world/asia/19xinjiang.html?hp
[Edit by="kkulish on Oct 21, 7:25:38 PM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

In today's San Fernando Valley Edition of the Daily News (page A13) there was a report that in order to make inroads abroad Wal*mart is moving to open stores in small rural areas in China. While this seems odd, these "small" cities can have a population of millions. Initially I thought the store would be a smaller version, but once I read about the size of the cities I had to readjust my thinking and remember that population size is a matter of perspective in China. 4 million in the city of Loudi might seem big compared to other countries, but not in China.

[Anonymous]

By chance I stumbled upon a series of lectures being given at ucla (sorry Clay & you USC types) in its World History Colloquium. http://www.history.ucla.edu/news-events/colloquiums-conferences/world-history-colloquium. Scholarly papers are available for download. You can still catch some of the meetings since they go on for the rest of October. One the papers you can download is "Imagining Pre-Modern China.

[clay dube]

Contemporary Chinese art is hot. Auction prices are rising and the number of exhibitions is growing. This blog includes links to many exhibitions. It isn't updated as often as it could be, but I think that you may find the existing posts and links to exhibitions interesting:

http://www.chinesevisualculture.com/

One of the highlighted galleries trades on the fame of the 798 art district:
http://www.798avantgallery.com/ Click on the artist link to be able to see slides of their work.

[clay dube]

I've noted the GlobalPulse web resource from Link TV in the web resources section. Here's a sample from GlobalPulse. They put together a five minute segment that starts with the Stephen Colbert question. Is China our friend or our enemy? Here's the video:

http://www.linktv.org/video/1363

It focuses on how China shot down, unannounced, one of its own satellites.

Here's a segment from our recent documentary which focuses on China's military buildup:
http://china.usc.edu/ShowArticle.aspx?articleID=1194[Edit by="Clay Dube on Dec 9, 5:08:02 PM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

It appears someone in China has a sense of humor more than half a year after the earthquake. A Yahoo article in a December 23, 2008 post, tells an amusing tale of a famous animal in China. The May earthquake in China, the 7.5 magnitude Sichuan shaker, had many devastating effects. But it also resulted in some lighter moments. A pig survived, buried, for 36 days, under rubble and trash. It lived by eating charcoal and drinking rain water. As a result it was voted top honors, in an online poll, of animals “who moved China” this year, according to the weekend edition of the China Daily. Other top animals included a dog that guarded its elderly owner when he was sick and even accompanied him to the hospital, and a cat that almost died of grief when its partner was run over by a car.
An unintended consequence of the pig’s fame, named Zhu Jianqiang (Strong Pig) is that the pig has become fat, lazy and bad-tempered. People visit the pig at a museum but it has become increasingly ungrateful. It’s keepers say it has become fatter and lazier by the day. It used to be taken for walks but now it has become too fat for that exercise. It also blocks people from entering its living quarters.

[Anonymous]

I found the link Clay provided in GlobalPulse to be very interesting, and I liked Colbert's description of the US and China as Frenemies. I also found it interesting that the BBC did a segment on Bush's trade sanctions regarding China and the emphasis on copyright piracy. It always surprises me how often Hollywood influences politics.

[clay dube]

The protection of intellectual property is a big issue in the US-China relationship and in China's dealings with other countries. Here is a comical look at some interesting marketing tricks:

Mirror article from Jan. , 2009

This isn't new. I've got a SANY cassette tape from about 1984.

This was discussed in our documentary on US-China relations. Here's a link to that segment and to a page with speeches, reports, and more:

Tensions over Trade (part 2 of "Election '08 and the Challenge of China")

And here is an article from the current issue of US-China Today which examines the problem.

No Brand Names?

What do your students think about piracy? Did the movie producers efforts to stem illegal downloads affect their perception of this (you've seen the trailers -- "illegal downloading is stealing")? Is defending intellectual property important?

[clay dube]

Hi Folks --
In April 2006, it was a great privilege to travel with a group of Palos Verdes Peninsula teachers to China. We staggered into Shanghai and on our final note, guess who else showed up? The Rolling Stones played in the sports arena just across from the Huating Hotel where we were staying. None of us got to attend the show, but a couple of us made our way to the backstage area (stunningly little security) and Becky managed to get a poster. Back at the hotel, a number of attendees were talking about the show. It seems that mostly it was an ex-pat audience.

Here's a photo that Augapfel took at the concert. He posted it on Flickr with the "creative commons" option permitting it to be used for noncommercial purposes.

[clay dube]

The stories from Xinjiang this week are grim. Ethnic divisions born of repression and inequality set the stage for the violence that has erupted this week. A protest demanding police attention into the deaths of two Uighurs in Guangdong province turned bloody on Sunday. There have subsequently been assaults by both Uighurs and Han. The government has tried to manage news coverage in the region. Net connections were cut and journalists were herded into convoys for "field trips" to see burned out buses, etc. Unlike Tibet, no special permission is required to travel to Xinjiang, so more foreign journalists were able to reach the region.

Here are a few teaching resources:
SPICE - Ethnic Minorities in China
http://spice.stanford.edu/catalog/ethnic_minority_groups_in_china/

From Silk to Oil (free download)
http://www.chinainstitute.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.ViewPage&PageID=577

Interesting video: On a Tightrope
http://www.onatightrope.org/

Please suggest useful resources and please discuss how you teach about crucial subjects such as ethnic social divisions, nation-making, and human rights.

*******
*******
While the details of the current unrest and efforts to calm it are necessarily incomplete, much is known about region's history and composition. We've had several workshops for teachers on Islam in China. Our next is Sept. 12, 2009. Contact Miranda Ko at [email protected] to sign up.

[clay dube]

Louisa Greve of the National Endowment for Democracy wrote this short review for her colleagues. She's permitted me to post it to the forum.

"On a Tightrope:" Uyghur orphans in a dust-blown city of 200,000. Kids learning the Uyghur tradition of tightrope-walking performances, kids playing schoolyard games, kids singing songs about safeguarding the unity of the motherland and loving the Party as one's mother and father (all this in 2006 or so). Religion is central: multiple scenes of kids shouting in unison their school pledge with the central theme, "we will not practice religion," in accordance with legislation that outlaws anyone under the age of 18 being exposed to religion or religious practice, including by their own parents. Yet in casual conversations on camera, Allah came up more than once. All the classes filmed were taught in Uyghur, which means the film may already be a relic of bygone days, since current gov't policy is pushing to make Chinese the medium of instruction in every elementary school classroom. (Uyghur was already banned several years ago in universities, complete with book-burning to clear out unneeded Uyghur-language textbooks). Depressing, no question, with brief relief in a few touching moments and some sunny individual personalities.

The Endowment hosted an event in May on "East Turkestan: 60 Years Under the People's Republic."
_______________________________
Louisa Greve
Director for East Asia
National Endowment for Democracy
1025 F Street, NW, Suite 800
Washington, DC 20004-1409 USA
+1 202 378-9700 (phone)
+1 202 378-9573 (direct line)
+1 202 378-9403 (fax)

[clay dube]

Hi Folks,

Chinese firms are acquiring foreign assets. This acquisition, though, occurred only in the minds of those twisted talented people at The Onion. (My favorite article is about the young lad who has memorized the 26-character alphabet, what's yours?

http://www.theonion.com/content/index

(Presumably there's a permanent link to the 7/20/2009 frontpage somewhere.)

Some articles:

Andy Rooney (or maybe not): http://www.theonion.com/content/video/china_s_andy_rooney_has_some?utm_source=a-section
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/potato_faced_youngster_lauded_for

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/american_consumer_masses_agree_it?utm_source=a-section

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/china_strong?utm_source=a-section

[Anonymous]

It takes a long long time for the resigned and trusting attitude of the people to change-it is a slow maturing process. The change comes with education and awareness of alternate ways and acceptance of varied attitudes. People have a tendency to frustrate and give up in the face of severe opposition.

[Author]

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