Asia

Way back in the mists of time when this blog was launched one of our first posts was a picture of actress Zhang Ziyi canoodling with her obviously western boyfriend at an L.A. Lakers games. There was a good deal of silly stuff on the internet accusing her of being a traitor to China etc etc. There was an similar outbreak when news broke …

From Reuters: “China faces wave of unrest in 2009.” Last month Simon wrote about whether Beijing could maintain social order as the economic crisis unfolds. A prominent mainland publication says the answer is most likely “no.” The Reuters report states:

China faces surging protests and riots in 2009 as rising unemployment stokes

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Over the past year China arrested nearly 1,300 people for endangering state security in the restive western region of Xinjiang, according to a story in the state press. The story (here in Chinese, and cited here in this AFP piece) says 1,154 of the suspects were formally charged. Those numbers are nearly double what was reported for the …

From time to time, mobile phone users in China receive a mass mailing text message that’s not the usual maddening spam (companies offering to supply illegal satellite dishes or equally illegal receipts for everything from airplane tickets to rent and of course offers for wonderful but amazingly cheap apartments). Mostly these non-spam …

This is not a shot of China’s latest space launch but the newly completed Guomao Phase II Tower lit up for the new year. Or possibly an SOS to an aliens who actually understand how our ailing economy works. There don’t seem to be many of us earthlings around who fall into that category these days. As President Elect Obama said in …

My colleague Lin Yang writes on the interet and corruption:

Chinese Netizens have seemingly scored another victory in the battle against corruption. An online campaign to expose the extravagant lifestyle of Zhou Jiugeng, head of a district real estate bureau in the city of Nanjing, led to his dismissal after someone posted a photo of

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Some corners of the world—Ireland and New Orleans come to mind—know how to turn a funeral into a celebration of the life of the deceased. To that list we should also add rural China, as Lin Yang reports:

I took a road trip last weekend to the ancient town of Fenghuang in Hunan province, a village that has existed since the 17th

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And here is our take –by my colleague Jessie Jiang– on whether the Chinese consumer is going to ride to the rescue of the country’s economy. (Hint: racking up huge personal debts isn’t a popular habit in China, to put it mildly, except maybe in gambling capital Macau, and even there things have quietened down a lot because of the crisis.)

Bao Tong was formerly a top adviser to Zhao Ziyang, the Chinese Communist Party secretary who was purged in 1989. After the Tiananmen crackdown Bao was sentenced to seven years in prison. He now lives under close scrutiny in an apartment on Beijing’s west side. I met him there for the first time last year and have gone back a couple …

Here’s my take on whether China is really facing social upheaval and possible political disintegration if the economic picture continues to darken.

Picture of the day, from a billboard in Beihai, China.