Most recent China news from Yahoo! News - World - Asia
• Chinese activist who fled house arrest lands in US
A blind Chinese legal activist who was suddenly allowed to leave the country arrived in the U.S. on Saturday, ending a nearly monthlong diplomatic tussle that had tested U.S.-China relations.
• Liu Xiang stays modest ahead of Olympics
Chinese athletics superstar Liu Xiang is playing down expectations for his performance at the London Olympics despite setting a season's best time in the 110m hurdles on Saturday.
• Blind Chinese dissident completes US odyssey
Blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng began a new life in the United States, praising Beijing's "restraint and calm" as he sought to draw a line under a month-long tussle that tested China-US ties.
• Blind Chinese activist completes US odyssey
Blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng began a new life in the United States on Saturday, drawing a line under a month-long diplomatic saga that embarrassed Beijing and tested ties between the world superpowers.
• Chinese activist who fled house arrest heads to US
A blind Chinese legal activist was hurriedly taken from a hospital and put on a plane for the United States on Saturday, closing a nearly monthlong diplomatic tussle that had tested U.S.-China relations.
• China says US report on its military unjust
China expressed Saturday its "firm opposition" to a Pentagon report that said Beijing was carrying out aggressive cyber espionage as part of a steady build-up of its military power, state media said.
Most recent China news from International News from telegraph.co.uk
• Dissident Chen Guangcheng leaves China for US
The blind Chinese dissident, Chen Guangcheng, left his country for the US on Saturday, but the fate of his detained relatives remained uncertain.
Most recent China news from Reuters - World
• Blind Chinese activist Chen arrives in New York
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng arrived in the United States on Saturday and declared "equality and justice have no boundaries" after China let him leave a Beijing hospital to quell a sensitive diplomatic rift between the two countries.
• Google says it has China's approval for Motorola deal
(Reuters) - Google said on Saturday that Chinese authorities have approved its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility Holdings, the last regulatory hurdle to a deal that would allow the world's No. 1 Internet search engine to develop its own line of smart phones.
Most recent China news from BBC News - Asia-Pacific - World Edition. (Note: If accessing BBC News from within China, you will probably need to configure your web browser to use a "proxy server" as the BBC is blocked.)
• China activist Chen lands in US
Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng arrives in New York, after his escape to the US embassy in Beijing last month sparked a diplomatic crisis.
• China tunnel explosion 'kills 20'
An explosion in a road tunnel being constructed in central China's Hunan province kills at least 20 people, state media say.
• China jails smuggler Lai for life
Lai Changxing, extradited from Canada to China to face smuggling and bribery charges, is jailed for life in China, state media says.
• China activist Chen heads for US
Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng, whose stay at the US embassy caused a diplomatic crisis, leaves China on a plane heading for the US.
• China media: Captured fishermen
Morning newspaper round-up: Widespread coverage over the fate of 29 Chinese fishermen detained in North Korea.
• China profile
Provides an overview of China, including key events and facts.
• China raises rare earth exports
China to allow more companies to export rare earths
Most recent Shanghai, China news from Wangjianshuos blog
• Over Optimistic and Over Pessimistic
Based on my observation on the International companies in China, which failed, or failing, they are swinging from the over optimistic mode to over pessimistic mode. eBay is an example, and Google is another.
They start with big ambition to get the whole country in few months, or 1 year, but it quickly find out that it is mission impossible and then they quickly switch to the over pessimistic mode and claim the failure. They are actually not.
What they need is neither of the two - they just need to be realistic.
• New Traditional Industry Leaders Meetup
This is an interesting gathering - a group of CEOs of Internet companies in Shanghai agreed to meet quarterly. We joked the industry has become a new "traditional industry", because it has been labor intensive, unlike the traditional internet business model.
Here is the final photo:
From the left to right are:
Afu, CEO of JJDD.com
Zhang Tao, CEO of Dianping.com
Bill Yao, CEO of PPTV.com
Mike Liang, CEO of Anjuke.com
Jian Shuo Wang, CEO of Baixing.com
It is good to catch up, always.
Drawing
As expected, people don't come promptly, so I used the time to draw the corner of the room.
• The Top of Paul Graham's List
A short quote from Paul Graham's to do list in this article The Top of My Todo List:
Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy.
Paul continued to be the most amazing writers that I read - he have some genuine thoughts, and guide him and many of his startups. I would highly recommend you to read his blog.
The Awkwardness of Meeting Someone in Person
In one book, Alan De Botton mentioned that reading is better than talking because it allows pause, and deep thoughts, and more well structured thoughts. You cannot fall into deep thoughts when you are at the conversation with your favorite author. Just as echoed in this article: Writing and Speaking, talking is not the best way for intelligent and thoughtful people to exchange ideas. I can imagine I have not too many things to talk about if I meet with Alan de Botton, or Paul Graham one day.
I had a conversation with Yu Ying, the famous doctor in Beijing who write micro-blog - a weibo with 800,000 followers. Her Weibo is interesting, and her talk on TnDao was great. But to when to bar with and chat, it is hard to calm down and really talk. That is the awkwardness to meet someone in person.
World Financial Center
The most interesting in Shanghai is maybe the 52th floor of the World Financial Center in Pudong. I visited the tower today because I had too meetings in the same building. People need to transfer to another elevator at the 52 and 53th floor. If you are someone who likes to climb to tall buildings, you can get to the 52th floor lobby without having to making any appointment with people working there. Below is the photo of the lobby.
Over the window, you can see the new Shanghai Tower is in good shape already.
• TnDao - Shanghai's TED
I attended the TnDao forum. It was great.
TnDao forum was inspired by TED, and was initiated by Mr. Dai Jianbiao and many other great people like Miss Jian Fang, and Mr. Jian Changjian. It is a monthly talk of great people and offers an opportunity for few hundreds people to escape from their busy lives to get inspired by new ideas, especially from different industries.
You can get more information and the past video from http://tndao.com.
It is free to attend, but you have to register on the website when it opens to registration. The next time should be around the early of June. I am invited to talk on the forum but I don't have any idea what to talk yet, so likely to skip.
• Longjing is My Favorite Village
"40-year-old is the time to form one's value system", He Ying meant it when we had coffee tonight, after I am back from Hangzhou (the fourth consecutive weekend).
The mountain area of Hangzhou is very good place for exercise, to drink, eat, to stay and to think. Among the villages, I love Longjing 龙井, Manjuelong 满觉陇 and Yangmeiling 杨梅岭 most. I climbed the mountains, and drinker the tea, and rate it as my favorite village in China. (Well, this is a very biased view, since I only visited very few of them. But anyone has the right to do the rating anyway, right?)
Here are some photos from the trip:
Above is the picture I drew at Longjing.
The Jiuxi (Nine Creeks) area:
• Going to Hangzhou Again
After being in Hangzhou for three consecutive weekend, I decided to go to Hangzhou again, today, with Wendy and Yifan.
This is an action to break the laziness and make some difference in the normal life.
IF, I mean everyone can imagine the IF part, we set our home in Hangzhou, and we will commute to Hangzhou every weekend. I know many people, at least 10 of them, have their home in a different city and they have to do the same thing as we do today, for years. Many of them have homes in Shanghai but work in Beijing or Shenzhen, or Hangzhou.
IF, we can sometimes understand others life, some strange behavior started to be normal. Thinking is the process to make those abnormal to normal.
• Changzhou
I am in Changzhou.
So far, it seems amazing. The city is clean and nice - just as an extension of the whole Biyun or Liangyan Area of Shanghai. It is just amazing.
Most recent China news from China Digital Times
• Chen Guangcheng Arrives in New York
Following his sudden departure last night from his hospital in Beijing, legal activist Chen Guangcheng arrived in New York and greeted the media near New York University, where he is expected to take up a fellowship. From CNN: United Airlines Flight 88 landed at New York/Newark Liberty International Airport to little fanfare after the U.S. State Department prohibited public and media access. Less than two hours later, Chen, 40, spoke from New York University, where he will participate in a fellowship. “I am very grateful to the assistance of the American Embassy and the promise of the Chinese government to keep protection of my rights as a citizen in the long term,” Chen said to a mob of reporters and onlookers. “I am very gratified to see the Chinese government has been dealing with the situation with restraint and calm.” The activist indicated he had been granted partial U.S. citizenship and asked people to “promote fairness and justice in China.”Passengers, including reporters, on the flight were not permitted to speak with Chen and his family, but a New York Times reporter did have a brief interview with him:Mr. Chen left Beijing with his wife and two children, and... Read more
• Hexie Farm (蟹农场 ): The Kiss of Freedom
In his latest contribution to his series for CDT, cartoonist Crazy Crab of Hexie Farm celebrates the news that activist Chen Guangcheng is reportedly on a flight headed for the U.S. after his long saga involving a dangerous escape from de facto house arrest, refuge in the U.S. embassy, and then two weeks in a hospital in Beijing while his fate was decided. When Chen spoke with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton upon his departure from the embassy, it was reported that he told her, “I want to kiss you!” Later, Chen clarified that he had said, “I want to see you.” Read more about Hexie Farm’s CDT series, including a Q&A with the anonymous cartoonist, and see all cartoons so far in the series. Hexie Farm also runs the Dark Glasses. Portrait website in support of Chen Guangcheng. More of his cartoons featuring Chen Guangcheng are part of a Foreign Policy Magazine slideshow. “9 Ways of Looking at Chen.” [CDT owns the copyright for all cartoons in the Hexie Farm CDT series. Please do not reproduce without receiving prior permission from CDT.]
© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.usPost tags: Chen... Read more
• TV Host Applauds “Cleaning Out Foreign Trash”
Since 2000, Yang Rui has been the host of English-language CCTV 9′s ‘Dialogue’ talk show and as such, in James Fallows’ words, part of “the face the government wants to present to the outside world.” From a 2009 profile in Germany’s Der Spiegel:Yang says he wants to “enhance China’s prestige in the world …. He speaks in a gentle, friendly manner — in the precise English he learned as a student in Great Britain. Here too, outside the studio, he remains the consummate gentleman, never rising into the shrill tones favored by many a government spokesperson.On his Weibo account on Wednesday, Yang showed a different side [zh]. Josh Chin’s translation at The Wall Street Journal reads:The Public Security Bureau wants to clean out the foreign trash: To arrest foreign thugs and protect innocent girls, they need to concentrate on the disaster zones in [student district] Wudaokou and [drinking district] Sanlitun. Cut off the foreign snake heads. People who can’t find jobs in the U.S. and Europe come to China to grab our money, engage in human trafficking and spread deceitful lies to encourage emigration. Foreign spies seek out Chinese girls to mask their espionage and pretend to... Read more
• Chen Guangcheng Prepares to Fly to the U.S.
On Saturday, Chen Guangcheng, who has spent two weeks in a hospital in Beijing after escaping de facto house arrest in Shandong Province and then seeking refuge in the U.S. Embassy, is reportedly at Beijing Airport preparing to fly to the U.S. From the AP: Chen Guangcheng told The Associated Press that he has left the hospital where he’d been staying and is at the Beijing airport. He expects to leave for the U.S. later Saturday. He says his wife and two children are with him, but that they do not yet have their passports. Also with him are hospital and border control staff. Chen escaped illegal house arrest in his rural town last month and sought the protection of U.S. diplomats. He had been awaiting permission to travel to the U.S. to study. From the Twitter account of ITV’s Beijing correspondent Angus Walker: #Chen left hospital in convoy of unmarked cars and one van with blocked out windows — Angus Walker (@anguswalkeritv) May 19, 2012And from NBC’s Adrienne Mong: Lots of western media at Beijing airport: crews just scrambled to get a shot of luggage they think belongs to #ChenGuangcheng and family. — Adrienne Mong (@adriennemong) May 19,... Read more
• Photo: The Forbidden City at sundown, by Michael Steverson
© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.usPost tags: Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall
• Wu’er Kaixi: China’s “Most Unwanted”
Former Tiananmen protest leader and long-exiled dissident Wu’er Kaixi marched up to the Chinese Embassy in Washington today, looking to get arrested. In a seeming inversion of recent appeals to U.S. diplomatic missions in China, and possibly inspired by Chen Guangcheng’s refuge at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, the dissident hoped to return to China after 23 years to see his family. USA Today provides some background on Wu’er Kaixi and his previous attempts at turning himself in: Wu’er, 44, escaped China in 1989 after authorities crushed the pro-democracy movement centered on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Now a citizen of Taiwan, Wu’er said that a Chinese police warrant for his arrest remains valid. His parents, in their 70s and in poor health, have repeatedly been denied permission to travel abroad to see him, he said. During two earlier, unsuccessful attempts to turn himself in to Chinese authorities — in Macau in 2009, and Tokyo in 2010 — “I managed to become the ‘most unwanted’,” said Wu’er. “I hope the Chinese Ambassador [in D.C.] will be inspired by U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke, just like he took in Chen Guangcheng.” When Wu’er got to the embassy’s doors today, no one inside would acknowledge... Read more
• Imperiled Buddhas and Sino-Afghan Relations
By investing heavily in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, China has extended its political influence in the war-torn country, and secured some of the resources needed to fuel its own rapid development. In 2007, state-owned China Metallurgical Group (MCC) won the rights to a large copper deposit, and initial development revealed a Buddhist heritage site dating back to the silk-road. Film-maker Brent Huffman has been documenting the tension between archeological and mining campaigns on the site, and posted about it on the Asia Society blog: The Buddhists that picked the location of a religious center in Mes Aynak, Afghanistan, some 2,000 years ago did so in part to make ornaments and coins from the copper at the site. Today, a Chinese mining company may destroy what they left behind to extract that same resource. [...]Efforts to save and preserve the massive site have been drastically scaled back to a project whose best hope is to merely document the site before the China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) begins copper excavation in 2014. The remaining cultural relics and immense structures, which are both too large and fragile to be moved, will all be destroyed. MCC, for its part, said it did not know the archaeological site existed when they... Read more
• Court Sentences “Most Wanted Fugitive” to Life
Chinese state media reported Friday that a Xiamen court convicted and sentenced smuggling kingpin Lai Changxin to life in prison, likely putting to rest a legal battle that began more than a decade ago when Lai escaped prosecution by fleeing with his family to Canada. From Reuters: “The Chinese government’s determination to attack crime and root out corruption is unwavering, the report said. Lai can still appeal against the conviction and sentence. The court concluded that, from 1991, Lai “established companies, strongholds and networks in Hong Kong and Xiamen to form a smuggling clique” that cheated customs inspectors to import cigarettes, cars, oil products, industrial materials and textiles worth a total of some 27.4 billion yuan ($4.3 billion). Lai bribed 64 officials through gifts of cash, real estate and vehicles worth some 39.1 million yuan, and he evaded taxes totaling 14.0 billion yuan. Lai’s crimes occurred in the special economic zone of Xiamen in Fujian province in the mid-1990s when Jia, now the Communist Party’s fourth most senior leader, was the province’s party boss. In The Globe and Mail, Mark MacKinnon traces Lai’s opportunistic rise to the top of China’s black market and writes that today’s ruling marks the end... Read more
• Chen Guangcheng’s Brother Describes Torture
As activist Chen Guangcheng remains in Beijing’s Chaoyang Hospital awaiting a passport to travel to the U.S. with his wife and family, his family back home in Linyi, Shandong is suffering the brunt of local officials’ anger over his escape earlier this month. His brother Chen Guangfu has told the media that he was tortured by security officers when he was detained for three days after his brother’s escape from de facto house arrest. Chen Guangfu spoke with isunaffairs magazine. From a BBC report on the interview:“They put me on a chair, bound my feet with iron chains and locked my hands with handcuffs behind my back,” he said. “They pulled my hands upwards forcefully. Then they slapped me in the face.” “They first asked me if I knew what this was about. I said ‘I don’t know’. So they beat me and slapped my face. Only on one side, not the other. And they trampled my feet with their leather shoes.” He told them it was him who had helped Mr Chen because he did not want to implicate others involved, but then realised they knew more details. ”I resisted for a really long time,” he said. ”In... Read more
• Gu Kailai’s French Middleman Found in Cambodia
After several weeks of speculation over the whereabouts of Patrick Henri Devillers, an alleged middle-man in Gu Kailai’s business affairs and possible lead into the details surrounding the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood, The New York Times’ Keith Bradsher tracks down the French mystery man in Phnom Penh: Mr. Devillers, 51, has graying hair and stands with slightly stooped shoulders. A pair of reading glasses hung from a black cord around his neck. He has an occasional wry smile, and a calm demeanor that may stem from his years of close study of Taoism, a mystical philosophy with deep roots in Chinese culture. Mr. Devillers declined to speak on the record at his modest home, a sparsely decorated but attractive two-story French colonial building that survived the Khmer Rouge’s bloody rule of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. After a subsequent exchange of e-mails, late Wednesday evening he allowed one comment to be attributed to him, a quote from the most famous Taoist text, the Dao De Jing, also known as the Tao Te Ching. Mr. Devillers used the quote to summarize his contempt for the media interest in him, his denial that he has engaged in money laundering for anyone in China... Read more
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