Την ίδια ώρα, στην Κίνα...

[Costas]

CDT eBook: Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon Classics — USD 2.99

Over the years, China Digital Times has collected, translated, and defined Chinese netizen language in our Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon. With 273 entries and counting, this wiki contains words, nicknames, and phrases netizens use to evade censorship and lampoon the political system. Epitomized by the grass-mud horse, a creature whose name becomes a vulgarity with a change of tone, these terms form a “resistance discourse” to propaganda and the status quo.

CDT now presents its first eBook, a collection of 71 must-know terms from the Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon. The Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon: Classic Netizen Language is now available in PDF and in the Amazon Kindle store. Organized by category and indexed in both English and pinyin, the eBook offers China-watchers and students of Mandarin a key to the Internet neologisms which have endured long beyond the particular circumstances which inspired them.

All proceeds from the sale of this eBook support China Digital Times.

 

[Costas]

Ωραία λινκ από το Sinocism:

Η πρόσφατη εν εξελίξει καταστολή στο ίντερνετ αποτελεί υλοποίηση απόφασης που είχε παρθεί πριν από μερικά χρόνια. Ας απολαύσουμε γλώσσα:

(1) Persisting in the guiding position of Marxism. Marxism has deeply revealed the social development rules of humanity, steadfastly safeguarded and developed the basic rights and interests of the broad people, and is a scientific theory guiding the people, promoting social progress and creating a happy life.

(5) Developing healthy and upward network culture. Strengthening online ideological and cultural battlefield construction is an urgent task in Socialist culture construction. It is necessary to earnestly implement and vigorously use, scientifically develop, and manage according to the law policies guaranteeing security, strengthen and improve network culture and management, strengthen online public opinion guidance, sing the online ideology and culture main melody. Implementing network construction projects, promoting excellent traditional cultural treasures and contemporary excellent cultural product network dissemination, producing excellent works and masterpieces suited to burgeoning media dissemination such as the Internet and mobile telephones, etc., encouraging netizens to create network cultural works with a healthy style. Supporting focus news websites in accelerating development, forging a batch of comprehensive websites and specialist websites having relatively strong influence at home and abroad, giving rein to the constructive function of main commercial websites, fostering a batch of network content production and service backbone enterprises. Developing new network technology and new business models, occupying the high ground of network information dissemination. Broadly developing civilized website construction, promoting civilized web business and civilized web use, supervising and urging network operators and service enterprises to implement legal duties and social responsibilities, not providing dissemination channels to harmful information. Strengthening network legal structure construction, accelerating the shaping of an Internet management system combining standardized laws and regulations, administrative supervision and management, sectoral self-regulation, technological guarantees, public supervision and social education. Strengthening guidance and management over social networks and instant communication tools, etc., standardizing online information dissemination procedures, cultivating a civilized and rational network environment. Punishing activities of disseminating harmful information according to the law, deeply moving forward the special campaign to clean up network obscenity and pornography and resist vulgar information, strictly strike network illegality and crime. Expanding online personal information protection strength, establishing network security appraisal mechanisms, safeguarding the public interest and national information security.
(από το China Copyright and Media)

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China’s e-commerce market is expected to leapfrog that of the United States this year to become the world’s largest by total customer spending, management consultancy firm Bain & Company says.

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China must spend at least 41.6 trillion yuan ($6.8 trillion) over two decades to integrate rural workers living in cities and towns so the country realizes benefits of urbanization, a United Nations report said. Spending may exceed 75 trillion yuan in a scenario with a higher rate of investment to improve living conditions and housing quality, according to the report released yesterday in Beijing. The study’s baseline assumptions are for the urban population to rise to 976 million in 2030 from 666 million in 2010 and integrate about 210 million migrant workers.

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Γραμμένο με σοφία:
On Being African in China
When a student from Ghana arrived in Beijing, she hoped to serve as a cultural ambassador -- but instead became an unwitting spectacle. (Zahra Baitie - The Atlantic)

 

[Zazula]

Κανείς δεν παραυγαίνει (sic) τον Wen Fu Liang και τα eggξαιρετικά του αυγλαΐσματα:

 

[Costas]

Να του πούμε να φτιάξει κι ένα να βγαίνει από μέσα η Ωραία Ελένη!

 

[Costas]

Confessions of a Reactionary, του ακτιβιστή (αγωνιστές τους λέγαμε παλιά) Teng Biao:
(The article first appeared in Life and Death in China (a multi-volume anthology of 50+ witness accounts of Chinese government persecution and 30+ essays by experts in human rights in China). When I wrote it, Xu Zhiyong was under house arrest; when it was published, he had already moved to the Beijing Third Detention Center. I dedicate this little essay to Xu Zhiyong and all those reactionaries whose homes have become prisons or who have made prisons their homes. – Teng Biao) (China Change)
Δυνατό κείμενο.

Από Sinocism
Η εκστρατεία εναντίον της διαφθοράς συνεχίζεται (σε συνδυασμό με μια εκστρατεία εναντίον των θυλάκων έκφρασης γνώμης):

Zhou Yongkang, former security tsar linked to Bo Xilai, faces corruption probe (South China Morning Post)
Current and retired top leaders endorsed the decision earlier this month during the secretive annual party meeting at the resort of Beidaihe in Hebei province. According to sources familiar with the leadership’s thinking, President Xi Jinping and his administration are determined to use the case to galvanise the anti-graft campaign. No Politburo Standing Committee member – retired or sitting – has been investigated for economic crimes since the end of the Cultural Revolution nearly 40 years ago. Sources said top leaders made the decision in view of the rising anger inside the party at the scale of the corruption problem and the vast fortune that Zhou’s family has amassed. Xi ordered officials in charge of the case to “get to the bottom of it”.

Teams from Gov't, Party Investigate China National Petroleum Company Executives (Caixin)Several teams from the central government's audit czar and Communist Party discipline watchdog are investigating executives at China National Petroleum Corp., sources close to the matter say.
The dispatching of investigators from both the party and the government parallels the downfall of four high-level executives in the country's largest oil company over two days.
Part of the teams' job is a routine, post-promotion check regarding Jiang Jiemin, former general manager of China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), after he was elevated to the helm of State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. But sources say the teams are also investigating other executives at the oil giant.
On August 26, party officials said that Wang Yongchun, deputy general manager of CNPC group, was being investigated for "severe discipline violations."
A day later, SASAC said on its website that three more executives from CNPC were the subject of inquiries: Li Hualin, deputy general manager of CNPC Group and chairman of Kunlun Energy; Ran Xinquan, vice president of PetroChina and head of the Changqing oil fields; and Wang Daofu, the chief geologist at PetroChina and president of the Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration & Development. CNPC issued a statement saying all four have resigned for personal reasons and have been replaced.

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Beijing Water Shortage Worse Than the Middle East (China File)
Beijing’s annual water consumption has reached 3.6 billion cubic meters, according to statistics released by the Beijing Water Authority, far more than the 2.1 billion cubic meters locally available. The per capita annual water availability is now around 120 cubic meters, well below the United Nations absolute water scarcity threshold, and puts China’s capital city in a position of more severe water scarcity than some countries in the arid Middle-East.
Statistics from Beijing Water Resources Bulletin shows that the decrease in the capital’s water supplies results mainly from the rapid decline in surface and underground water resources. In recent years, water supplies from these two sources have decreased by 38%.

Chinese researchers identify key protein behind depression (xinhua)
Chinese researchers said Thursday that they have identified a key protein in the brain responsible for the development of depression, offering a fresh avenue in the search for therapies to treat depression.
Previous studies have found that cells in a brain region called lateral habenula (LHB) are hyperactive in depressed individuals, but scientists haven't known what triggers them.
Curious about molecular-scale activity in the LHB of depressed people, the researchers from the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, used a technique called quantitative proteomic screening to examine the proteins in the LHB tissue of regular rats and rats that had been depressed since birth.
The researchers reported in the U.S. journal Science that a protein called CaM was nearly twice as abundant in the depressed rats.

 

[Costas]

Σε σχέση με την εκστρατεία συλλήψεων:
China: Nationwide Arrests of Activists, Critics Multiply
Drive to Strengthen One-Party Rule Unhindered by Upcoming UN Rights Council Election (Human Rights Watch)
Since February 2013 the government has arbitrarily detained at least 55 activists, taken into custody critics and online opinion leaders, and increased controls on social media, online expression, and public activism, rolling back the hard-won space China’s civil society has gained in recent years.
The crackdown is unfolding as China campaigns to be elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the UN’s preeminent human rights body, in November 2013, and prepares for the review of its human rights record before the council in October 2013. Και ακολουθεί ο κατάλογος.

 

[Costas]

Ρετροσπεκτίβα Yang Fudong στο Berkeley Art Museum. (NYT) [Έχει κάμποσα στο Γιουτούμπ]

 

[Costas]

(Xinhua) -- About 30 percent of the Chinese population, or 400 million people, can not speak mandarin, said the Ministry of Education here Thursday.
Although the remainder of 1.3 billion Chinese can communicate in mandarin, also known as "putonghua," a large number of them do not speak it well, and the country still needs to invest in promoting mandarin, said Xu Mei, the ministry's spokeswoman, at a press conference.
The government has held a campaign to promote mandarin in the third week of September every year since 1998. This year the ministry will focus on the remote countryside and areas inhabited by ethnic minorities, Xu said.

 

[Costas]

Κείμενα του Rudolf Wagner για την κινέζικη λογοτεχνία:

The contemporary Chinese Historical Drama. Four Studies (UC Press, 1990)

και

Literatur und Politik in der Volksrepublik China (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983):
Vorwort
Einleitung: Literatur als regulierte Selbstaufklaerung
Epilog: Der Funktionaer als Gaertner

 

[Costas]

“Upholding the principle of ‘strike, investigate and punish group by group’, this round of special operation further traces the clue, deepens the investigation, digs deeper to unearth organized rumor networks, accurately strikes the major targets, strikes hard and deters these criminal activities in order to protect the legal rights of the broad masses.”

“Some [of the 52 "criminal suspects"] even sensationalized the conflicts that occurred during the development process in Inner Mongolia, deliberately stirring up ethnic relations, encouraging the masses to appeal for their interests in a radical way such as student strikes and protest demonstrations.”

(Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center) [Southern, όχι Inner...]

 

[Costas]

Αποφυλακίστηκε 15 μήνες νωρίτερα ο δημοσιογράφος που είχε καταδικαστεί σε 10 χρόνια φυλάκιση όταν η Yahoo είχε δώσει το όνομά του στις αρχές: China has released from prison early a prominent dissident and journalist who was jailed in 2005 for leaking state secrets abroad after Yahoo helped authorities identify him, a rights group said. Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Yahoo defended itself at the time, saying it had to abide by local laws. (SCMP)

Μεταφραστικές γκάφες και λαθάκια:
New York Times apologises to tennis superstar Li Na for steroid use allegation News of the alleged steroid pill use spread throughout Chinese media shortly after The New York Times piece was published, and after looking into the matter, officials from the Tennis Management Centre of China’s State General Administration of Sports denied that Li had ever taken steroids. Reporter Larmer later revealed that the article's background information had been pieced together from interviews with Li and parts of her Chinese-language biography Fighting Alone. The term “steroid pills” had been a mis-translation of the Chinese term for “hormone medication,” and The New York Times issued an official apology to Li’s agent Max Eisenbud. (SCMP)

 

[Costas]

Νέες αυστηρότερες προδιαγραφές για την εκπομπή καυσαερίων από τα οχήματα στο Πεκίνο (πρώτη πηγή μόλυνσης πια στην πόλη, μπροστά από τις βιομηχανίες). (live from beijing)

Smithfield Foods Inc. (SFD), the world’s largest hog and pork producer, said U.S. regulators will allow the company to be bought by China’s Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd. in what would be the biggest Chinese purchase of a U.S. firm. (Bloomberg)

(Reuters) - The U.S. government allegedly spied on Brazilian state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, known as Petrobras, according to the web site of Globo, Brazil's biggest television network. Κατά τα άλλα, η NSA ψάχνει μόνο για "τρομοκράτες".

Behind China’s Spree Killers (The Economic Observer) (μόλις προ ημερών, πάλι, ένας εσωτερικός μετανάστης επιτέθηκε σε δημοτικό σχολείο γιατί δεν ενέγραφαν το δικό του παιδί. Σκοτώθηκε ο ίδιος μαζί με κάποια παιδιά κι άλλα είναι σε κρίσιμη κατάσταση στο νοσοκομείο).

Καλή είδηση:
Taiwan has gone high-tech in its efforts to crack down on dolphin and whale poaching. Last week, police and other officials completed training for a new litmus-paper test that speeds up the process for identifying dolphin or whale meat, with conclusive identification available within 10 minutes, versus four to five days through DNA testing, said Taiwan’s Forestry Bureau conservation section head Kuan Li-Hao. (WSJ-CRR)

 

[Costas]

Το φιδάκι ο Διαμαντής στο μπουκάλι δεν είχε ψοφήσει, μετά από τόσους μήνες. Της επιτέθηκε και τη δάγκωσε! (κινέζ., φωτό)

 

[Costas]

An Inside Look at China’s Censorship Tools
The team’s research also helps shed light on a persistent question in China—namely, just how many censors are employed in the country. In Mr. King’s experience, the company recommended that his team hire two to three full-time censors for every 50,000 users. If that same formula was used at Sina Weibo, China’s most popular microblogging platform, the company would employ somewhere between 2,160 and 3,240 censors to cover its 54 million daily active users. (WSJ)

(China Daily)
Internet users who share false information that is defamatory or harms the national interest face up to three years in prison if their posts are viewed 5,000 times or forwarded 500 times, under a judicial interpretation released on Monday. The new guideline, issued by the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate, defines the criteria for convicting and sentencing offenders who spread rumors online that defame, blackmail or provoke. Those who concoct or edit information that damages an individual's or organization's reputation and share this directly or through others can be charged with libel, a criminal offense in China, under the interpretation. Όχι παίζουμε!

Υπάρχει και η ποινική πλευρά του ζητήματος:
The judicial interpretation, to be effective on Tuesday, is the first of its kind to regulate online rumors in China. It metes out punishment for companies and individuals paid to delete online messages or intentionally post false information. If a company's illegal gross revenues exceed 150,000 yuan (24,500 U.S. dollars) or its illegal gains surpass 50,000 yuan, it will face illegal business operations charges deemed "serious," according to the judicial interpretation. The illegal gross revenue and gains amounts for individuals was set at 50,000 yuan and 20,000 yuan, respectively. (xinhua)

The new rules could serve as a warning to malicious Internet users that they should not break a legal “bottom line” when posting online. However, the top court’s spokesman, Sun Jungong, stressed that Internet users are still encouraged to expose corruption and other violations despite the new rules, adding that as long as web users are not fabricating information to slander others, they will not face criminal charges. (xinhua) Και ποιος το αποφασίζει, τι είναι τι; Πεδίον δόξης λαμπρόν για τσουβάλιασμα.

Καλή είδηση:
Guangzhou to end controversial labor camps
"The police and many legal experts have realized the drawbacks of laojiao and called to abolish the system, which has become outdated" (China Daily)

Πύραυλοι κατά πλοίων (αμερικανικών αεροπλανοφόρων) (medium), με βεληνεκές 1500 χλμ.

New nano-tech could treat China's lake pollution
...a single gram of the new nanomaterial that can kill algae floating in an area equal in size to a basketball court. (xinhua)

 

[Costas]

Is Cantonese in Danger of Extinction? The Politics and Culture of Language Policy in China (China Notes) Χορταστικό άρθρο.

 

[nickel]

Το φιδάκι ο Διαμαντής στο μπουκάλι δεν είχε ψοφήσει, μετά από τόσους μήνες. Της επιτέθηκε και τη δάγκωσε! (κινέζ., φωτό)

Και έτσι ανακάλυψα ότι η γκουγκλομετάφραση από τα κινεζικά είναι υποφερτή, αν και δεν είμαι σίγουρος ότι θα καταλάβαινα χωρίς να έχω για βοήθεια την κεντρική ιδέα, όπως την έδωσες.

 

[Costas]

Το China Copyright and Media συνεχίζει τις μεταφράσεις:
The Party manages propaganda, the Party manages ideology, this is decided by the fundamental essence of our Party and country, it is an important principle and system shaped through a long time of practice by the Party, and is an important aspect of persisting in the leadership of the Party. We must realistically and satisfactorily implement the requirement that the Party manages propaganda and the Party manages ideology, we must fully understand the long-term nature, complexity and acuity of struggle in the ideological area, incessantly strengthen as sense of politics, a sense of the larger picture, a sense of responsibility and a sense of worry, we can absolutely not let the leadership power fall to others.

Strengthen online social management according to the law. Strengthen the management of new technologies and new applications, all sorts of forums, blogs, microblogs, micromessaging services, search engines mobile telephone newspapers, mobile news clients and other businesses that have news, public opinion and social mobilization functions, must be brought under licensing management. We must, through strengthening online topical propaganda, improve online criticism work, optimize the online environment, and forge an online positive public opinion atmosphere; through strengthening Internet propaganda management organ construction and team construction, forge systems and mechanisms where the various departments mutually cooperate, and all areas of society vigorously participate, and constitute a nationwide “one network” management structure; through deeply launching online public opinion struggles and tightly preventing and restraining online attacks and acts of infiltration, organize forces to refute mistaken ideologies and viewpoints.

Strengthen management of the cultural market, social and cultural activities. Persist in deeply launching activities to sweep pornography and strike illegality, investigate and prosecute unlawful activities in performance and entertainment, Internet cafés and Internet surfing services, electronic games, fine art sales, cultural trading and other activities. Strengthen management over all sorts of lectures, forums, seminars and public report meetings, strengthen management over people-run social science research organs, non-governmental cultural work rooms, and people-run cultural organs, strengthen management over higher education school journals, intra-school organizations, intra-school broadcasting and campus networks, do not provide dissemination channels for mistaken ideologies.

 

[Costas]

"Πριγκιπικός" κοκκινοφρουρός (γιος στρατηγού) ζητά συγνώμη από το δάσκαλό του για τα μαρτύρια που του έκανε κατά την Πολιτιστική Επανάσταση (φωτό). (Αυτός έζησε, άλλοι/ες ξυλοκοπήθηκαν μέχρι θανάτου)

Ο Τζανγκ Γιμόου θα ανεβάσει Όπερα του Πεκίνου. (xinhua) "Its atheistic value lies in symbolization and conception. It just like, three or five paces can stand for the traveling around the world. Six or seven people can stand for an army. I hope to present the opera from such an atheistic perspective." Γκουγκλομετάφραση;

 

[Costas]

Κοιτάχτε ένα όμορφο χέλι...μανούλα μου!

Όλο το σημερινό πρόγραμμα (με εξαίρεση το άρθρο για τα καντονέζικα) ήταν αντλημένο από το Ενημερωτικό Δελτίο Sinocism.

 

[Costas]

Φωτογραφικό λεύκωμα με τον Λιν Πιάο.

When I moved to Beijing from New York in February to study Chinese, a question began to haunt me: Could Beijing’s air in 2013 be more dangerous than the toxic brew produced by the 9/11 attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center, which hung over Lower Manhattan for months, sickening thousands of firefighters, recovery workers, and ordinary New York residents? (The Atlantic)

On an average day, about 40 censors work 12-hour shifts. Each worker must sift through at least 3,000 posts an hour, the former censors said. (Reuters)