The big news during the first few days of China’s National People’s Congress has been the revelations, or lack thereof, about how Beijing plans to spend its way out of the current slump. The Chinese business magazine Caijing has a useful chart comparing the plan outlined Friday with the original stimulus package announced last year. …
Asia
Time to Beat Your Enemies
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9GLXLspENc]
March 5-March 7 is 惊蛰 (jingzhe, or “Waking of the Insects”), a lunar holiday observed almost exclusively in Hong Kong. People here mark the occasion by seeking out elderly women to use a shoe or slipper to beat the pulp out of a strip of paper that symbolizes a backstabbing …
Popstars in Drug Shock (Yawn)
In Hong Kong, public reaction to celebrity misbehavior is far exceeding metropolitan norms. Last year’s Edison Chen imbroglio—in which photos of the singer-actor having sex with former celebrity lovers were distributed online—led to preposterous scenes as sobbing fans and outraged community leaders struggled to come to terms with …
Congress is Now in Session
It’s that time of year again, when Beijing is awash in initialisms like NPC (National People’s Congress) and CPPCC (Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.) The signs that China’s rubber stamp legislature and its advisory pal are in session are all around: police patrols increase, the Internet slows to a crawl (YouTube was …
Winning Christie’s bidder refuses to pay
Wow, I didn’t see this one coming: A Chinese collector named Cai Mingchao has come forward, claiming to be the winning bidder of two bronze statues auctioned off last week in Christie’s Yves Saint Laurent auction. But, he says, he doesn’t plan to pay for them.
An adviser to the China’s National Treasures Fund, a nonprofit group …
Tibet Simmering….Or on the Brink?
March 10th is the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s flight from Lhasa to India to escape advancing Chinese troops sent to crush an uprising in the Tibetan capital against Beijing’s rule. (Actually, it is the anniversary of the day throngs of Tibetans surrounded his Potala palace to protect him; he actually fled on march 17 and arrived …
Asia Braces for Spike in Suicides
Here‘s our piece on suicide in Asia in the wake of the current global economic crisis. A new study examines the dramatic jump in suicides following the Asian financial crisis a decade ago. Compared to 1997, suicide rates among men in 1998 rose by 44% in Hong Kong, 39% in Japan and 45% in South Korea. Governments need to come up with
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Cars, Bears and Satellites
There are a few stories on time.com today that may be of interest to China Blog readers: Bruce Crumley writes from Paris about China’s growing role in the satellite launch business; Michael Schuman has a piece from Hong Kong about why the expectations of a quick economic recovery in China are mostly hype; and I’ve got a story on why …
Heads Up: Dalai Lama Agonistes
From this week’s dead tree edition, here’s my take on what the Dalai lama should do to break the deadlock. Hint: it wouldn’t be fun for him.
Those Bronze Heads: Truth and Fiction
I had planned to write another follow up to Ling’s post belwo about the sale of the bronze heads, which seemed to me likely a case of a shrewd bidding up of prices on a couple of rather ugly bronze taps by a seller playing on Chinese nationalist feelings. Having happened to have had lunch yesterday with the author and journalist Jasper …
Bronze heads sell for $36 million
Despite China’s efforts to stop the sale of the bronze rat and rabbit heads, looted in 1860 from Beijing’s Old Summer Palace, unidentified phone bidders purchased the sculptures for $18 million each Wednesday night, far exceeding earlier estimates of $10-13 million each. Yves Saint Laurent’s art auction set a record for a private …
Gary Locke and China
President Obama nominated former Washington governor Gary Locke to head the Department of Commerce yesterday. The process has been dominated by the withdrawal of two previous candidates. While Locke, the former governor of Washington, has had fund-raising problems that will undoubtedly be examined during the confirmation process, there …
State Press: Self-Immolation in Central Beijing
Three men in a vehicle lit themselves on fire in downtown Beijing this afternoon, the state-run Xinhua news service reported. The incident occurred just before 3 p.m. in a central shopping area not far from Tian’anmen Square. The highly public location of the fire, coupled with the sensitive date–today is the beginning of Losar, the …