Asia

Charlie Cole

For those of you who complained that my headline in the post on the Greenpeace global warming report was misleading and unfair, I take your point and have changed the head. Thanks for pointing it out.

Just when you thought nothing perpetrated by the administration of George W. Bush could surprise any more, another instance of unbelievably reckless behavior comes along. This time it’s to do with China and Taiwan and involves the small matter of nearly provoking a nuclear war. A report in the Congressional Quarterly, which closely …

A protest against a planned chemical plant in Xiamen on June 1st would have been unremarkable anywhere else. It is exactly the kind of not-in-my-backyard issue that rouses up even the most complacent citizens around the world. But the fact that it took place in China after a campaign of protest on the web and through SMS messages, is …

Here’s a strong sign that Chinese regulators are under pressure due to the current food safety scandals: they’re blaming the press. “Recently, some media, actually quite a few, have wantonly reported on the so-called lack of safety of Chinese food products,” said an official with China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, …

During the past couple days some China Blog readers have offered a few suggestions. We always love to hear these, though I can’t promise we’ll go along with them. For instance, a regular commenter who goes by the handle “perseverance” suggests we add some posts in Chinese, which would be “an unusual publicity stunt.” I’m afraid that it …

No, this isn’t a story blaming China for global warming. Just a highly alarmed post about the Greenpeace report that just came out about their expedition to the Himalayan glaciers. As you can see from these now and then photos from the Rong Bu Glacier, the change from 1968 to 2007 is deeply disturbing the Greenpeace report (Reuters …

I would have posted the link but the Wall Street Journal, from which this comes, is behind a paywall so here it is. Considering the current worldwide furore over contaminate Chinese food products, this announcement is amazingly timed. Nobody’s perfect of course but the two parties involved-are both well known for their obsessive quality …

Disney Does Songjiang

I know that every parent in the United States has his or her own Holy Sh__! moment when it comes to how deep under the skin American companies get in trying to sell their stuff to children (via their parents). McDonalds, the toy companies, the Cartoon Network, etc etc. Their marketing tactics are, depending on …

Rebiya Kadeer, the Uigher human rights activist, has a piece on the OP-ED page of today’s Wall Street Journal talking about what has happened to her children in Xinjiang since she was released from prison in 2005. She now lives in the United States.
The link is here:
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB118049448867818199.html

Like everybody else, we wrote a piece yesterday about the surprise death penalty handed down to the former head of Chinese Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu. Like most people, too, we concluded that it was a case of shajijinghou(杀鸡警猴) or kill the chicken to warn the monkey, a much quoted piece of Chinese folk wisdom. For …

Blogs have become wildly popular in China, and one of the more interesting is written by a woman who is married to a Chinese American guy—a physician– and lives in the United States. The blog is called “The Shadow in the Water,” and it’s popular because it basically compares and contrasts middle class life in the United States …

From the New York Times, a fascinating story about a neighborhood in Queens where people have decided to learn Mandarin. The reason? To get along with the Chinese community.

Last year I did a piece on the growing popularity of Mandarin. TIME reporters talked to students in London, Phnom Penh and Kentucky, among other places. The chief …