Rolling Chinese Dream 2014

Xu Zhiyong about to be subject to the kangaroo court tomorrow (Wed 1/22)

Jerry Cohen, Evan Osnos:

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/china_law_prof_blog/2014/01/jerome-cohen-on-the-upcoming-trial-of-xu-zhiyong.html

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2014/01/the-trial-of-the-chinese-dream.html?mobify=0

yeah that's fucked, but the fact such opposition exists is surely encouraging

Well opposition has always existed and always will exist

http://qz.com/168705/westerners-are-so-convinced-china-is-a-dystopian-hellscape-theyll-share-anything-that-confirms-it/

:D

I meant the level of opposition; it would appear to be a serious & prominent swell of peaceful dissent. the Party can't hold on like this forever right

What system of government can

rolling zen angst

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/01/21/u-s-exports-its-factories-and-pollution-to-china/?mod=WSJBlog

What’s more unnerving, though, is that while several of the media outlets updated their posts already, none has changed the headline or noted that the story isn’t true. Does that mean that accuracy and accountability don’t matter for click-bait pieces about China that “feel” true? Unfortunately for readers, that seems to be the case.

^ how i feel about so many israel-related articles

I assumed that the Beijing sunrise-simulator thing was a hoax when I saw it circulating on Facebook. Nice to have it confirmed though. I didn't know it had been picked up by reputable news organizations though (not sure whether Daily Mail qualifies). That's embarrassing, but it does look like CBS News at least has thoroughly re-edited the story to emphasize the combination of sunrise video and smog was just a coincidence.

I haven't watched the Japanese general's lecture, but the full 2005 Lee Kuan Yew interview is interesting:

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/01/keep-your-head-down-and-smile.html

The part excerpted is pretty OTM

http://behindthewall.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/25/22449116-china-jails-prominent-rights-activist-for-four-years

Four years. Fucking hell

this is fantastic:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/01/28/265468566/remaking-all-that-jazz-from-shanghais-lost-era

i was just deported from china.

what happened??

Holy shit dude

No!

it wasn't even a deportation, as far as i can tell.

the first time i went to china was 2006 or late 2005, so i've got almost a decade's experience going in and out, living in the country.

the nature of the china visa system has made my legal status in china questionable at time, but no more questionable than a large proportion of foreigners in china, especially non-corporate longterm residents. like lots of other people, i treated the f class business visa as a sort of coverall visa for when i didn't have secure employment from a work unit licensed to hire foreigners. i always felt like... when the chinese government sees my sketchy invitation letter from some dude in guangzhou that runs a textile factory inviting me to do an internship... they kinda know the deal, right? the chinese government agrees to sort of look the other way and i agree to not get involved with the public security bureau during my stay and everyone is happy.

this time, i got my z class visa, the foreign expert certificate, a contract from a work unit licensed to hire foreigners (because i was working for a state-owned corporation, i was basically working for the chinese communist party), residency permit, all my papers in order!

anyways. so, i was working in taiyuan, mostly, and i had an apartment there. but i was also traveling to datong and staying in an apartment there, which was owned by the company. i got a 10 a.m. visit from the psb, got invited down to the station, got interrogated and... i told them openly that i was staying in datong and hadn't registered with the local police department. they bought me kfc and drove me to jail and said they'd contact my company to get it all sorted out.

i waited and waited and chilled in a cell and ate cabbage and watched cctv-1 and stayed locked down 23.5 hours out of the day and shit in a bucket. most of the guys in the neighboring cells were petitioners picked up in beijing and sent back to datong to suffer the consequences. it was a very, very strange experience. i was treated extremely well and got pictures with all the guards and got a weekly pack of cigarettes. but it was boring and cold as fuck and the only thing that saved me was the fact that cctv-1 shows 《咱们结婚吧》 every afternoon (thoughts of 未未, the barren temptress, kept me warm on cold dusty shanxi nights).

my boss came and told me, hey, don't worry, give it a week and you'll be out. he came back again and said wait another three days. another day. then on sunday, the psb came back and basically said, use our computer, book a flight out of the country OR ELSE you will be forcibly deported at our expense and banned from entering the country for five years.

i booked a ticket out of beijing. tuesday morning, two psb guys came for me, said they'd accompany me to beijing. they flew me from datong to beijing, took me out for dinner at the REAL KUNGFU restaurant at the beijing airport, posed for pictures with me, and stood guard until i went through security.

so... i'm in canada.

i haven't managed to get a hold of anyone at work in taiyuan but they probably still think my situation is going to be fixed before spring festival. i feel like the psb was playing them all along too because they were paying for the prison stay (25 rmb a day) and maybe even my datong-beijing flight.

also, i got nabbed on the day before payday, and had to pay for a ticket home during primetime spring festival time, so i ended up losing about 6000 usd on a fake deportation, not including yet the cost of the trip back + visa application.

wow @ all of that

Guess your boss didn't have that 关系. Damn dude. i Need to register with the 派出所 ASAP

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/01/28/get_out_of_jail_cheap_chinese_prison_corruption

:(((( dylannn

i feel like... it was sort of very much in keeping with the way that local governments/police forces work... like, there was a legal process that should have been followed but they mostly used the law as a threat ("it's easier this way, you might end up being banned for five years, being blacklisted" / "if there's a trial, your company will be in really big trouble but if you just leave and come back in a legal fashion you can continue work"), a method of coercing me into doing what they wanted me to do. i ended up volunteering to take part in an extrajudicial deportation, if that doesn't sound too over the top.

minor corruption at the detention center was rampant. you could tell who had cash/connections based on when/how much they were smoking, what they got to eat, how often they got visits from family, etc. most of the other people i came in contact with were either petitioners or petty criminals that weren't facing a real trial but just being held for a few days.

but yeah, everyone was extremely nice, the warden, the police at the prison, the guards (mostly early 20s goofy boys with large hairstyles and tight jeans), the other prisoners....

dylannn i hope stuff is okay where you're at! xx

it's all good! the whole process wasn't horrible, alhamdulillah-- more like, just, vaguely insulting and surreal. i have the privilege of holding a foreign passport, which the majority of people caught up in the same system don't have.

i feel like... it was sort of very much in keeping with the way that local governments/police forces work... like, there was a legal process that should have been followed but they mostly used the law as a threat ("it's easier this way, you might end up being banned for five years, being blacklisted" / "if there's a trial, your company will be in really big trouble but if you just leave and come back in a legal fashion you can continue work"), a method of coercing me into doing what they wanted me to do. i ended up volunteering to take part in an extrajudicial deportation, if that doesn't sound too over the top.

― dylannn, Wednesday, January 29, 2014 12:58 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

I spent the last week learning about this kind of stuff

To me, it sounds like you got caught up in a internecine squabble between your company & some other organization and unfortunately you were the pawn that got sacrificed

IDK though I also know that China has issued new visa regs in the past year so maybe it's just part of a general broader crackdown

Not gonna fuck around with the PSB anymore though

Damn I remember Jianlibao

Delicious drink

Used to get it in Chinatown

The big draw was that it had honey mixed in

Damn shame you can't get it anymore

Yikes, dylannn.

Whoa- that's crazy! How long were you in the jail altogether?

what a weird story man

19 days from arrest to flying out of beijing.

Sheesh. I guess if you stay in hotels when you travel, they're supposed to take care of that registering with the local police stuff for you. Still scary though.

the hotel takes care of that and they send the photocopy of your passport and the necessary forms straight to the psb. otherwise, if it's not in a hotel, you've got 24 hours to register.

Yikes!

http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1416497/xu-zhiyongs-trial-makes-mockery-beijings-pledge-enforce-rule

Jerry predictably (and righteously) rips into the CCP over the Xu Zhiyong case

i had the opportunity to watch a lot of tv the last month and i love 中国好歌曲/sing my song. i will embed youtube videos of performances now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd5Y19pF6EA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6POjXt4Hm0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yqc8QwtcBA

all three of these videos involve the judges crying
ranging from manful weeping to hysterical sobbing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSgVluV93a0

《咱们结婚吧》 first episode with engl subtitles. not the freshest show right now but i adore it.

My mom made me watch them and the first guy was the only guy I liked. Chinese dashboard confessional

The judge from Singapore has such a big Singapore accent, also endearing how she slips in and out of English

Also thought it was bullshit that they waited til the last possible second to pull the lever for my man. I woulda slammed as soon as I heard him hit the high note on the chorus

Also kind of interesting that he wrote the song that the last yi dude on the show used and sang!

Also he's hella short

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCmDB2X-bsQ

tanya meets a fellow singaporean

Is this the thread where we wish people a Gong show fat hoe?

the 莫西子诗 i like above all else. i saw it on cctv 3 the first time and caught the cctv 1 rebroadcast the next day so i could record it on my phone. when he hits the first 这颗心就稀巴烂, his girl singing along to 你呀你 终于出现了 and then can't hold it together or decide if she's crying or laughing, the fucking story about her letter. kills me.

http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/why-the-u-s-embassy-releases-pollution-data-in-beijing-but-not-in-delhi/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

and i didn't realize Delhi’s air is roughly twice as bad as Beijing’s when measures of one of the most toxic pollutants are compared.

Yeah somehow I ended up in Beijing during the week when it's experiencing unusually low air pollution

Like the PM 2.5 was below 25 today, I think

http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae232/daggerlee/SH/29738B1D-20EC-4F5B-942A-32D40380A18F_zps2pvjawsn.jpg

Took this on New Year's Day, then left the country for 5 days

Came back and it was still like this

I don't know you anymore Beijing

this site is incredible
the mystery now is 'why only 80%'

I've always found it a very unfriendly site from a user experience pov

Tons of keyword spamming

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/world/asia/china-court-sentences-uighur-scholar-to-life-in-separatism-case.html

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/28/hong-kong-clashes-kick-start-plans-activists-blockade-city

Came here looking for HK protest talk. I really don't follow the news there, or know the current status quo beyond a vague outline of how HKSAR works in the most general way. Could anything meaningful come of these developments?

I doubt it

Also no doubt in mind that the CCP is screwing the pooch here too

http://i.imgur.com/HxdqDKP.jpg

Photoshopped??

Oh looks like it's from 2012

http://i.imgur.com/5eHxznT.jpg

h/t ken c

http://www.vox.com/2014/9/28/6856621/hong-kong-protests-clashes-china-explainer

Hard to truly appreciate how bad Max Fisher is until he writes about something close to you

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2688692/china-blocks-instagram-mentions-of-tear-gas-amid-hong-kong-protests.html

x-post- uh, why is Max so bad? I know little about Hong Kong and China I confess.

He brings all the clarity of someone who headed his high school's Model UN congregation

https://time.com/3444164/hong-kongs-protesters-are-fighting-for-their-economic-future/

I think this is a much better overview of the issues at hand fwiw

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/china-warns-hong-kong-protesters-of-unimaginable-consequences/2014/10/02/245eb391-e506-4c24-9cdc-f1c62528e6fb_story.html?hpid=z1

Is it gonna get ugly?

Probably not - at worst more tear gas and rubber bullets

Really hope the protestors won't try to 'occupy' government buildings as happened in the recent taiwan protests

Btw curmudgeon I figure you would know - what's the precedent for occupation of non-public space?

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/09/25/pro-beijing-media-accuses-hong-kong-student-leader-of-u-s-government-ties/

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/884956.shtml

:)

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/02/british-banker-charged-murder-hong-kong

possibly unfair but anyone who calls their kids rurik probably gives them other problems too

Saw that - for a city of 7 million people, HK has had a lot of weird and grisly murders

if there is any area in the world i would expect to find an "American Psycho style" murderer it is Wan Chai

Otm

http://japanfocus.org/-Ho_fung-Hung/4207

I'm far from an HK expert
So I found this
Interesting

Will try to dive into that when I have some head space

http://i.imgur.com/8Md1ODn.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/kQ5YSM9.jpg

lol

a+

http://libcom.org/blog/xulizhi-foxconn-suicide-poetry

我来时很好，去时，也很好

(Reuters) - A leader of Hong Kong's student protests called on Thursday for a respected intermediary to help arrange a trip to Beijing where the students want to make their case to China's leaders for greater democracy in their city.

Will this be even allowed to happen?

Well no - I don't think Beijing would ever agree to that

http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/i-speak-blood-poetry-foxconn-worker-xu-lizhi

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/nov/10/japan-shinzo-abe-china-xi-jinping-handshake-video

Inscrutable

lol dont u think its notably frigid even by the standard of these things

abe is trying to be concilliatory though, the froideur is from the other side

CCP has whipped up anti-Nippon sentiment to such a degree that Xi really had no choice

abe is far more constricted than xi, between his own nationalist right and the reality of the balance of powers
everything about that is emphasizing japan as a supplicant
not at all inscrutable

http://thediplomat.com/2014/11/ishiharas-stealth-attack-on-the-japanese-constitution/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/06/world/asia/zhou-yongkang-china-arrests-former-security-chief.html

I guess they finally dropped the hammer - wow

Better late than never, I guess.

When I saw "drop the hammer" I first thought you were talking about China versus Hong Kong protestors

http://i.imgur.com/HwxAVJx.png

bullet train?

Yeah - they hope to achieve these times (measure from Beijing, obv) by 2020

BJ to HK would be amazing - right now it's 24 hours

http://qz.com/208119/china-is-reportedly-thinking-about-building-a-bullet-train-that-reaches-america/

omg

only ilx thread on nk is stupid but 2 recent interesting things on border issues from sino-nk:

http://sinonk.com/2015/01/06/low-key-north-korean-soldier-murder-yanbian/
+
http://sinonk.com/2014/12/31/command-and-conquer-the-co-option-of-market-forces/