Please read this link - maybe this time it wasn't the CULTURAL DEPARTMENT - but nobody knows:
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2010/04/07/mystery-surrounds-cancellation-of-dylan-tour/
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
AND HERE A TRIBUTE TO MR BOB DYLAN !
Hope as many people can see this - esp on the MAINLAND - enjoy some Bob Dylan here (including 2x Hendrix version of "All along the Watchtower" - I am afraid Hendrix also would have been banned to perform in China. Millions of Bob Dylan Fans feelings are hurt by the decision of the China Government (isn't this the standard reply of China officials .......?):
BOB DYLAN IS NOT WELCOME IN CHINA !
What a shame - the so-called CULTURAL department decided not Mr Bob Dylan have the 2 concerts in China. How dangerous it seems Bob Dylan is ? Like this you can never be GREAT. Upfront the WORLD EXPO in Shanghai - your cadres are doing something like this ? What is your WORLD you have in mind ?
Please see below link for further info:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/apr/04/china-blocks-bob-dylan-gigs
Please see below link for further info:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/apr/04/china-blocks-bob-dylan-gigs
Friday, February 12, 2010
KUNG HEI FAT CHOY !
HERE SOME STUFF PERFECTLY MATCHING WITH ALL THE JOY AND HAPPINESS EVERYBODY IS LOOKING FORWARD TO THE NEXT FEW DAYS - ISN'T IT ? THE BIG AND POWERFUL ECONOMIC SUCCESS AND RECOVER FROM THE "FINANCIAL TSUNAMI" - PRAISE THE GOVERNMENT - PRAISE THE CORRUPT OFFICIALS WHO ARE COMING BACK AGAIN AND AGAIN JUST IN DIFFERNT POSITION. HAPPY NEW YEAR MR. HU - HAPPY NEW YEAR MR. WEN !
CHINA: What Price Young Lives?
By Ma Guihua and Jiang Guibin*
HEZHOU, China, Dec 29, 2009 (IPS) - As more and more rural Chinese bid farewell to their impoverished home villages in their pursuit of a better life in bigger cities, leaving behind their young children in the care of relatives or aging parents seems only a small price to pay, especially in times of financial crisis.
But for some, the price is simply too high.
When a three-story brick building in Yanghui Village in Hezhou, in south China’s Guangxi Autonomous Region, was gutted by fire in November, the majority of the victims turned out to be children.
Yang Chunfeng still vividly recalls what happened on that fateful morning. Awakened by the sound of a blast, he rushed out of his house and saw a huge chunk of the building next door had been blown off while flames were raging high. Villagers coming to the rescue were soon carrying out soot-blackened children while others were screaming and running for their lives.
"All the children being taken out of the building were burned bare, with no hair or clothes left," recalled Yang, who is in his 50s. An explosion at an illegal firecracker workshop (employing children) inside the building triggered the massive fire.
Thirteen of the 14 victims, all students of Zhiyang Primary School, were aged 7 and 15. Two of them died of severe burns. All of them either had one or two parents working in cities away from home.
Yanghui Village is about two hours’ drive from Hezhou City, located east of the picturesque city of Guilin and bordering Hunan and Guangdong provinces. With a population of 3,000, half of them children under 14, the village is home to only 4,000 mu (231 acres) of arable land for tobacco and paddy rice. Per capita annual income from farming is a pitiable 600 yuan (about 85 U.S. dollars), hardly enough to feed a family.
Unable to make ends meet, villagers choose to work in other cities in Guangxi, including Guilin, Wuzhou and Liuzhou, or the neighbouring Guangdong Province, where labor-intensive jobs from export-oriented factories had propped up the local economy.
According to Yang Youji, the village chief, over 1,000 villagers leave to work in construction, textile or brick-making factories, making an average of 18,000 yuan (2,572 dollars) a year each—way beyond their farm earnings. They are forced, however, to part with their children, totaling 1,050 within the entire village.
Statistics indicate that some 130 million farmers left their home villages in 2007—when the global financial crisis began—to join the ranks of migrant workers in cities across China and become the main labour force in construction, manufacturing, textile, processing and tertiary sectors. As a result, over 58 million children were left in their rural homes, where their kin, usually grandparents, looked after them. Children under 14 accounted for more than 40 million of these young people.
Since the economy took a sweeping downturn, triggered by the collapse of financial giants in the United States, many small factories catering exclusively to foreign markets have gone bankrupt. Well-paid jobs are scarce and reduced earnings could only cover some basic family needs.
In Dongguan City, Guangdong Province, alone, 909 foreign-owned enterprises had to close down in 2007. By mid-2008, revealed the National Development and Reform Commission, 67,000 small and medium-size enterprises had gone bust.
Some of the children left behind by their parents have had to assume part of the ensuing financial burden by trying to earn their own keep to help defray the costs of their education, including their daily allowances. Working at the firecracker factory helped them achieve this goal. After all, all they needed to do was to insert fuses into the 1,000-plus beehive-like, powder-filled, little tubes coiled up to resemble a big plate.
Yang Xiaoli, a six-grader from Zhiyang Primary School, felt proud of what she could earn in the firecracker workshop. "For every coil I finished, I got 3 jiao (about 4 U.S. cents)," she said, adding that within two to three hours before school started in the morning, she could insert 3,000 fuses into firecrackers, making around one yuan (14 cents). During school breaks, she could generate about 3 yuan (42 cents) a day. "But if I work too long, my eyes hurt."
To her knowledge, many children in her neighbourhood had been doing the same, providing cheap labour and using their earnings to buy snacks and school supplies. The older ones used their money for more personal items. "I heard that some children, maybe due to their adolescence, felt uneasy about asking money from their grandparents for their personal stuff," explained Chen Xiaojie, the head teacher.
On hearing that his son, Yang Ke, was hurt in the fire, Yang Qisheng rushed to the hospital. After the blast, his face swollen and his skin blackened, he scurried back home crying.
"As a parent, who wouldn’t like to bring his children along so he personally could look after them? But my earnings could not afford his school fees and the cost of living in a city, so I had no choice but leave him with my parents," said Yang, who is separated from his wife. He also provides for the medical needs of his parents by sending them part of his income from Guangdong.
"I am the only one that the whole family could count on," he sighed. His son lives in a room next to the house of the grandparents, some 300 metres from the workshop.
Feng Lan’s nine-year-old daughter was killed on the spot. "I only hope my eldest daughter [also one of the victims] could make it. Otherwise, I don’t know how I could live on," said Feng, as she awaited news about the condition of her other daughter, who was lying unconscious in a hospital. Days later, she finally received word about her daughter, and it was not what she had hoped to hear.
Feng and her husband have been working in Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, for years, leaving the girls with their grandparents. Today, they are left only with the photos of their daughters, stored in an aunt’s mobile phone.
Yang Qishao and his brother had no idea that their sister, a six-grader at Zhiyang, had been working. "She bought us shoes, socks, sometimes snacks. We didn’t know where the money came from," said Yang. "If I had money, I would buy my sister some clothes. Hers had been burned to rags," said Yang, oblivious to what happened to her sister.
Most of the guardians, as well as the teachers, said they knew nothing about the children’s money-making activity until the deadly blast.
The city government had allocated one million yuan (140,000 dollars) for the blast victims’ treatment. But given the severity of the injuries, the children will take a long time to recover. Many will carry their burn scars for life
(*This feature was produced by IPS Asia-Pacific under a series on the impact of the global economic crisis on children and young people, in partnership with UNICEF East Asia and the Pacific.)
(*The authors also write for China Features.)
(END)
CHINA: What Price Young Lives?
By Ma Guihua and Jiang Guibin*
HEZHOU, China, Dec 29, 2009 (IPS) - As more and more rural Chinese bid farewell to their impoverished home villages in their pursuit of a better life in bigger cities, leaving behind their young children in the care of relatives or aging parents seems only a small price to pay, especially in times of financial crisis.
But for some, the price is simply too high.
When a three-story brick building in Yanghui Village in Hezhou, in south China’s Guangxi Autonomous Region, was gutted by fire in November, the majority of the victims turned out to be children.
Yang Chunfeng still vividly recalls what happened on that fateful morning. Awakened by the sound of a blast, he rushed out of his house and saw a huge chunk of the building next door had been blown off while flames were raging high. Villagers coming to the rescue were soon carrying out soot-blackened children while others were screaming and running for their lives.
"All the children being taken out of the building were burned bare, with no hair or clothes left," recalled Yang, who is in his 50s. An explosion at an illegal firecracker workshop (employing children) inside the building triggered the massive fire.
Thirteen of the 14 victims, all students of Zhiyang Primary School, were aged 7 and 15. Two of them died of severe burns. All of them either had one or two parents working in cities away from home.
Yanghui Village is about two hours’ drive from Hezhou City, located east of the picturesque city of Guilin and bordering Hunan and Guangdong provinces. With a population of 3,000, half of them children under 14, the village is home to only 4,000 mu (231 acres) of arable land for tobacco and paddy rice. Per capita annual income from farming is a pitiable 600 yuan (about 85 U.S. dollars), hardly enough to feed a family.
Unable to make ends meet, villagers choose to work in other cities in Guangxi, including Guilin, Wuzhou and Liuzhou, or the neighbouring Guangdong Province, where labor-intensive jobs from export-oriented factories had propped up the local economy.
According to Yang Youji, the village chief, over 1,000 villagers leave to work in construction, textile or brick-making factories, making an average of 18,000 yuan (2,572 dollars) a year each—way beyond their farm earnings. They are forced, however, to part with their children, totaling 1,050 within the entire village.
Statistics indicate that some 130 million farmers left their home villages in 2007—when the global financial crisis began—to join the ranks of migrant workers in cities across China and become the main labour force in construction, manufacturing, textile, processing and tertiary sectors. As a result, over 58 million children were left in their rural homes, where their kin, usually grandparents, looked after them. Children under 14 accounted for more than 40 million of these young people.
Since the economy took a sweeping downturn, triggered by the collapse of financial giants in the United States, many small factories catering exclusively to foreign markets have gone bankrupt. Well-paid jobs are scarce and reduced earnings could only cover some basic family needs.
In Dongguan City, Guangdong Province, alone, 909 foreign-owned enterprises had to close down in 2007. By mid-2008, revealed the National Development and Reform Commission, 67,000 small and medium-size enterprises had gone bust.
Some of the children left behind by their parents have had to assume part of the ensuing financial burden by trying to earn their own keep to help defray the costs of their education, including their daily allowances. Working at the firecracker factory helped them achieve this goal. After all, all they needed to do was to insert fuses into the 1,000-plus beehive-like, powder-filled, little tubes coiled up to resemble a big plate.
Yang Xiaoli, a six-grader from Zhiyang Primary School, felt proud of what she could earn in the firecracker workshop. "For every coil I finished, I got 3 jiao (about 4 U.S. cents)," she said, adding that within two to three hours before school started in the morning, she could insert 3,000 fuses into firecrackers, making around one yuan (14 cents). During school breaks, she could generate about 3 yuan (42 cents) a day. "But if I work too long, my eyes hurt."
To her knowledge, many children in her neighbourhood had been doing the same, providing cheap labour and using their earnings to buy snacks and school supplies. The older ones used their money for more personal items. "I heard that some children, maybe due to their adolescence, felt uneasy about asking money from their grandparents for their personal stuff," explained Chen Xiaojie, the head teacher.
On hearing that his son, Yang Ke, was hurt in the fire, Yang Qisheng rushed to the hospital. After the blast, his face swollen and his skin blackened, he scurried back home crying.
"As a parent, who wouldn’t like to bring his children along so he personally could look after them? But my earnings could not afford his school fees and the cost of living in a city, so I had no choice but leave him with my parents," said Yang, who is separated from his wife. He also provides for the medical needs of his parents by sending them part of his income from Guangdong.
"I am the only one that the whole family could count on," he sighed. His son lives in a room next to the house of the grandparents, some 300 metres from the workshop.
Feng Lan’s nine-year-old daughter was killed on the spot. "I only hope my eldest daughter [also one of the victims] could make it. Otherwise, I don’t know how I could live on," said Feng, as she awaited news about the condition of her other daughter, who was lying unconscious in a hospital. Days later, she finally received word about her daughter, and it was not what she had hoped to hear.
Feng and her husband have been working in Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, for years, leaving the girls with their grandparents. Today, they are left only with the photos of their daughters, stored in an aunt’s mobile phone.
Yang Qishao and his brother had no idea that their sister, a six-grader at Zhiyang, had been working. "She bought us shoes, socks, sometimes snacks. We didn’t know where the money came from," said Yang. "If I had money, I would buy my sister some clothes. Hers had been burned to rags," said Yang, oblivious to what happened to her sister.
Most of the guardians, as well as the teachers, said they knew nothing about the children’s money-making activity until the deadly blast.
The city government had allocated one million yuan (140,000 dollars) for the blast victims’ treatment. But given the severity of the injuries, the children will take a long time to recover. Many will carry their burn scars for life
(*This feature was produced by IPS Asia-Pacific under a series on the impact of the global economic crisis on children and young people, in partnership with UNICEF East Asia and the Pacific.)
(*The authors also write for China Features.)
(END)
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
GOOGLE MAYBE WILL LEAVE CHINA
Please read below directly from the GOOGLE BLOG:
A new approach to China
1/12/2010 03:00:00 PM
Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident--albeit a significant one--was something quite different.
First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses--including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors--have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.
Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.
Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers.
We have already used information gained from this attack to make infrastructure and architectural improvements that enhance security for Google and for our users. In terms of individual users, we would advise people to deploy reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on their computers, to install patches for their operating systems and to update their web browsers. Always be cautious when clicking on links appearing in instant messages and emails, or when asked to share personal information like passwords online. You can read more here about our cyber-security recommendations. People wanting to learn more about these kinds of attacks can read this U.S. government report (PDF), Nart Villeneuve's blog and this presentation on the GhostNet spying incident.
We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech. In the last two decades, China's economic reform programs and its citizens' entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today.
We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that "we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China."
These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.
The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.
Posted by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer
Please see the link here - there you can find many other links for this topic:
http://http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html
A new approach to China
1/12/2010 03:00:00 PM
Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident--albeit a significant one--was something quite different.
First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses--including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors--have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.
Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.
Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers.
We have already used information gained from this attack to make infrastructure and architectural improvements that enhance security for Google and for our users. In terms of individual users, we would advise people to deploy reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on their computers, to install patches for their operating systems and to update their web browsers. Always be cautious when clicking on links appearing in instant messages and emails, or when asked to share personal information like passwords online. You can read more here about our cyber-security recommendations. People wanting to learn more about these kinds of attacks can read this U.S. government report (PDF), Nart Villeneuve's blog and this presentation on the GhostNet spying incident.
We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech. In the last two decades, China's economic reform programs and its citizens' entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today.
We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that "we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China."
These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.
The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.
Posted by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer
Please see the link here - there you can find many other links for this topic:
http://http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html
Monday, January 11, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Made in China. Made with the World
Here some news about a campaign by the China Government to do something "good" to the "MADE IN CHINA" image. Not so sure if this spot will do very good. Please use this link - you can also see the ad there:
http://www.media.asia/The-Workarticle/2009_11/Peoples-Republic-of-China--Made-in-China-Made-with-the-World--Global/38032
http://www.media.asia/The-Workarticle/2009_11/Peoples-Republic-of-China--Made-in-China-Made-with-the-World--Global/38032
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