- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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BrotherAdso posted:
There are three very distinctly different Muslim populations in China. The Hui, Uygher, and Turkic populations have extremely different takes on Islam and its relation to China, Chinese culture, and the modern PRC. They also have radically different histories within China. Which one are you curious about?
Possibly stupid question, but why aren't the Uighurs considered Turkic?
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Feb 24, 2012 00:22
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May 1, 2024 13:47
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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The romanization system of Chinese characters.
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Feb 27, 2012 06:34
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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Pretty good article about the recent events in Chongqing.
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/mar/19/chinas-falling-star-bo-xilai/
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Mar 20, 2012 09:01
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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Ronald Spiers posted:
I also don't see how you can equate giving arms to a dictator as a form of imperialism.
Really?
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Mar 24, 2012 10:29
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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Interesting article on corruption in the Chinese military. It seems heavily based on private statements by a Gen. Liu Yuan though and I have no idea how accurate a source he is, but it seems probable.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/16/rotting_from_within
edit:
quote:
The US government even refused Wang Lijun, former chief of police of Chongqing.
That's almost assuredly because he walked into a consulate in the middle of China. It would have been essentially impossible to accept him.
Xandu fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Apr 17, 2012
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Apr 17, 2012 01:30
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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Chen Guangcheng seems to have escaped house arrest in Beijing and rumor is that he's hiding in the US embassy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/28/world/asia/chen-guangcheng-blind-lawyer-escapes-house-arrest-china.html
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Apr 27, 2012 19:23
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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Well, that was a weird conclusion to the case.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CHINA_BLIND_LAWYER?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-05-02-09-40-40 posted:
BEIJING (AP) -- The blind Chinese activist at the center of a six-day diplomatic tussle between the U.S. and China said he fears for his family's lives and wants to leave China, hours after American officials announced an agreement with Beijing that was to guarantee his safety.
Chen Guangcheng escaped from illegal house arrest and other mistreatment in his rural town, placing himself under the protection of U.S. diplomats last week. On Wednesday, after six days holed up inside the American embassy, he emerged and was taken to a nearby hospital. U.S. officials said they had extracted from the Chinese government a promise that Chen would reunite with his family and be allowed to start a new life in a university town.
Hours later, however, a shaken Chen told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his hospital room that U.S. officials told him the Chinese authorities would would have sent his family back to his home province if he remained inside the embassy. He added that, at one point, the U.S. officials told him his wife would have been beaten to death.
"I think we'd like to rest in a place outside of China," Chen said, appealing again for help from U.S. officials. "Help my family and me leave safely."
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement that no U.S. official spoke to Chen about physical or legal threats to his wife and children. Nor did the Chinese relay any such threats to American diplomats, she said. She did confirm that the Chinese intended to return his family to their home province of Shandong, where they had been detained illegally and beaten by local officials angry over Chen's campaigns to expose forced abortions, and that they would lose any chance of being reunited.
"At every opportunity, he expressed his desire to stay in China, reunify with his family, continue his education and work for reform in his country," Nuland said. "All our diplomacy was directed at putting him in the best possible position to achieve his objectives."
The differing accounts could not be immediately reconciled. But the turn in Chen's fate comes after nearly seven years of prison, house arrest and abusive treatment of him and his family members by local officials.
Chen's flight into the protection of U.S. diplomats in Beijing last week had created a delicate diplomatic crisis for Washington and Beijing. It also threatened to derail annual U.S.-China strategic talks with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton starting Thursday.
Under the agreement that ended the fraught, behind-the-scenes standoff, U.S. officials said China agreed to let Chen and his family be relocated to a safe place in China where he could study at university, and that his treatment by local officials would be investigated.
Chen, 40, said he never asked to leave China or for asylum in the U.S. and said American officials reassured him they would accompany him out of the embassy. At the hospital, Chen was reunited with his wife, his daughter and a son he hasn't seen in at least two years. But after they got to his room in Chaoyang Hospital, he said no U.S. officials stayed behind and that the family is now scared and wants to leave the country.
He also took issue with another facet of the U.S. version of his departure - that on his way to the hospital Clinton called him and he told her in halting English "I want to kiss you."
"I told Clinton that I want to see her now. I said" - he said speaking in Chinese. Then switching to English he said, "I want to see you now."
Chen had become an international symbol for human dignity after running afoul of local government officials for exposing forced abortions carried out as part of China's one-child policy. He served four years in prison on what supporters said were fabricated charges and was then kept under house arrest with his wife, daughter and mother, with the adults often being roughed by officials and his daughter searched and harassed.
His dogged pursuit of justice and the mistreatment of him by what seemed like vengeful local authorities brought him attention from the U.S. and foreign governments and earned him supporters among many ordinary Chinese.
The differences over his security aside, leaving Chen in China is risky for President Barack Obama. Washington will now be seen as party to an agreement on Chen's safety that it does not have the power to enforce.
Ai Xiaoming, a documentary filmmaker and activist, said the Chinese government fails to ensure people's rights, so the best solution would be for Chen and his family to go to America.
"In the first place, Chen Guangcheng should not have to ask a foreign country to protect his rights. His rights should be protected by his own country, through the constitution. But it is obvious that this cannot be done," Ai said. "I feel that the U.S. has always accepted political refugees, it has always provided asylum, so I hope to see Chen Guangcheng safely leave."
Clinton said in a statement that Chen's exit from the embassy "reflected his choices and our values" and said the U.S. would monitor the assurances Beijing gave. "Making these commitments a reality is the next crucial task," she said.
The discrepancies also muddy an agreement that would have shelved, at least temporarily, a predicament that threatened to move human rights to the front of a U.S.-China agenda crowded with disagreements over trade imbalances, North Korea and Syria.
With Chen out of the way, in theory, Clinton, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and their Chinese counterparts would be set to focus on the original purpose of their two-day talks starting Thursday: building trust between the world's superpower and its up-and-coming rival.
Even so, the Chinese Foreign Ministry signaled its pique with the affair, demanding that the U.S. apologize, investigate how Chen got into the embassy and hold those responsible accountable.
"What the U.S. side has done has interfered in the domestic affairs of China, and the Chinese side will never accept it," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said in a statement.
Senior U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the intense negotiations that led to Chen leaving the embassy, said the U.S. helped Chen get into the embassy because he injured his leg escaping from his village. In the embassy, Chen did not request safe passage out of China or asylum in the U.S., the officials said.
The officials refused to say if Washington would apologize. One official said that embassy staff acted "lawfully" and in conformity with policy, suggesting that the U.S. does not believe it has anything to apologize for.
The arrangements for Chen carries risks as well for China's government, which worries about encouraging activists and government critics.
As news spread that he had been taken to the hospital, in the eastern part of the city, media crews and a few supporters gathered outside. A man stood in front of the gate at the hospital and held up a sign saying "Freedom for Guangcheng, Democracy for China" for a minute before police took him inside. The hospital's name became a banned search term on the much-censored Chinese Internet, joining a long list of permutations for Chen's name.
The U.S. officials said Chen would be settled outside his home province of Shandong and have several university options to choose from. They also said that the Chinese government had promised to treat Chen "like any other student in China" and would investigate allegations of abuse against him and his family by local authorities.
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May 2, 2012 18:19
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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It sounds like his family was threatened by the Chinese government so he felt pressured to leave the embassy, but then surprised (?) when US officials immediately abandoned him right afterwards.
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May 2, 2012 19:07
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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Voice of America and the various Radio Free xs have literally nothing to do with the CIA. NED is not exactly a neutral organization, but it's hardly a proxy organization for the CIA, either.
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May 2, 2012 23:11
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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Well he's in a hospital in Beijing right now. The fear for his safety is what happens after the cameras leave.
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May 4, 2012 02:57
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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You got me- I don't know Arabic. I did learn some of the basics from a friend who interspersed just about every sentence with "If you're a man, you say ..." ; "If you're a woman, you say..." which is why I felt that it was strongly gendered. In my experience, if there's a division of the way men and women talk, it's not going to be in women's favor. I would like to learn more and see the argument you're talk about!
Well, adjectives are genderized, so a woman would add a letter to the end of certain words, and the same would occur if you were talking to a woman. I wouldn't be suprised if there were differing speech patterns amongst men and women (I'm not exposed enough to the language to know), but isn't that true in many langauges?
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Jun 22, 2012 03:57
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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I didn't see it in the OP, but is anyone familiar with The Private Life of Chairman Mao by Li Zhisui. I was about to cite something from it for a paper, but then I noticed the controversy over it on its wikipedia page.
edit: I'm writing about the Chinese perspective on negotiations with the US in 1971 and 1972, I've already got Mao's China and the Cold War, but any other suggestions are appreciated as well.
edit2: Saw some discussion of it earlier in the thread, I'll probably cite with a disclaimer since there's nothing particularly controversial in the passage.
Xandu fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Jun 25, 2012
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Jun 25, 2012 01:46
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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Discussion starts here
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Jun 25, 2012 04:50
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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Meh, Vietnam has a claim that's even more reaching than China's. The stink they are raising over 西沙 is because they apparently sold poo poo they didn't own to foreign companies and now China's planning on developing it instead. China's had complete and total control of the islands they are bitching about since like 1974.
The US is trying to respond to the growing sphere of influence in SEA and Africa, but they are neglecting S. America where China's making even more inroads. Kinda funny to watch in all honesty.
Don't use Chinese characters next time, please.
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Jul 9, 2012 17:09
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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So is Daniel Bell a respected China scholar?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/opinion/a-confucian-constitution-in-china.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Global-Viewpoint/2012/0724/What-America-s-flawed-democracy-could-learn-from-China-s-one-party-rule
The first article in particular strikes me as terrible. Is this at all a popular idea amongst the Chinese?
quote:
In modern China, Humane Authority should be exercised by a tricameral legislature: a House of Exemplary Persons that represents sacred legitimacy; a House of the Nation that represents historical and cultural legitimacy; and a House of the People that represents popular legitimacy.
The leader of the House of Exemplary Persons should be a great scholar. Candidates for membership should be nominated by scholars and examined on their knowledge of the Confucian classics and then assessed through trial periods of progressively greater administrative responsibilities — similar to the examination and recommendation systems used to select scholar-officials in the imperial past. The leader of the House of the Nation should be a direct descendant of Confucius; other members would be selected from descendants of great sages and rulers, along with representatives of China’s major religions. Finally, members of the House of the People should be elected either by popular vote or as heads of occupational groups.
Xandu fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Jul 25, 2012
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Jul 25, 2012 04:24
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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Arglebargle, observance of Ramadan consists almost entirely of not eating/drinking/having sex during the day so how can one not observe Ramadan except by eating/drinking/having sex to show you're not observing it? It's not like people put on their Ramadan hats and give Ramadan cards and do their special public places Ramadan dance that ONLY Muslims are allowed to do. This sort of law would never pass the books in France because it's affecting completely private observance to actually refrain from behavior, which is why this is far more like Thought Police type-law than ~*Secular State*~ behavior and that's pretty obvious.
I don't know how Muslims in China practice their religion, but what the restriction most likely amounts to is no public observance of the iftar.
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Aug 2, 2012 19:35
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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Oh we are so not having this conversation in here.
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Mar 2, 2013 04:35
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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Interesting video of a reporter being detained in Beijing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZjsenUWFyI
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Mar 15, 2013 19:18
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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People who pay more attention China than I do, how true is this article in your experience?
http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/03/why-the-one-child-policy-has-become-irrelevant/274178/
quote:
Before getting pregnant with her second child, Lu Qingmin went to the family-planning office to apply for a birth permit. Officials in her husband's Hunan village where she was living turned her down, but she had the baby anyway. She may eventually be fined $1,600--about what she makes in two months in her purchasing job at a Guangdong paint factory. "Everyone told me to hide so the family-planning people wouldn't find me, but I went around everywhere," she told me. "In the past, that place had very strict family planning, but now the policy has loosened. The cadres worry that there are too many only children here." I asked her if government policy had factored into her decision to have a second child. "It was never a consideration," she said.
Lu Qingmin, or Min, is typical of the migrant workers I met while researching a book in the factory city of Dongguan. Born in one place, working in another, and married into a third, they are as adept at moving between worlds as the frequent-flying global élite, with the difference that they have never left their home country. The Chinese government, which is good at transmitting edicts from Beijing down through the provinces to counties and villages, isn't set up for people who don't respect borders. Married migrant women are required to send home a certificate every year confirming that they are not pregnant; Min has never done this. Her older sister, who works in nearby Shenzhen, also has two children. The owner of an apartment that I rented in Dongguan from 2005 to 2006 had two children; so did a businessman who gave me a tour of the city's karaoke bars. "Most of my friends have two children, except the ones who have three children," Wu Chunming, a migrant who has lived in the city for nineteen years, told me. "In the villages now, having two children is standard."
For so long a symbol of the authoritarian state at its most coercive, China's policy limiting most families to one child is slipping into irrelevance. Last week, the government announced it would merge the National Population and Family Planning Commission, which has overseen the policy for three decades, into the Ministry of Health -- a tacit admission that limiting births no longer requires the scrutiny and enforcement it once did. Most observers see this as a first step toward dismantling a policy that has already been rendered inconsequential by increased mobility, rising wealth, and the sense that stringent controls are no longer necessary. Wealthy Chinese can travel to the United States to give birth, which also confers the bonus of American citizenship on the child. Couples one step down the economic ladder may have a second child in Hong Kong, Macau, or Singapore. Families with two offspring are commonplace among the country's millions of mobile entrepreneurs; an estimated 150 million rural migrants enjoy similar freedoms. Even in the countryside, where heavy penalties and forced abortions were more prevalent in the past, officials are loosening their grip. In my conversations with rural Chinese people over the past several years, it has become clear that fines that were once prohibitive are now just a nuisance--a couple of months' wages, rather than a lifetime of savings.
The one group that still sticks to the letter of the law are the country's traditional élite: urban residents with proper household registration, or hukou, often in government jobs, who risk punitive fines and dismissal from their jobs for violating the law. In Dongguan, the penalty for a second child in a hukou-holding family can be as high as 200,000 RMB, or $31,000; any woman with a child must have an ultrasound every three months to ensure she is not pregnant. A friend of mine in Shanghai had two abortions in the years following the birth of her daughter. "A lot of entrepreneurs, including some of my friends, have two children," she told me. "But we both work for government units, so we can't."
Officially, the policy remains the same. In 2004, a group of social scientists petitioned Beijing to relax the one-child rule, eventually allowing all families to have two children. After thirty years, they argued, the policy had lowered fertility and raised living standards; now China faced the opposite problem of an aging population with too few young people to support them. The government turned down the proposal, fearful of igniting a population explosion. In 2009, these experts tried again, this time presenting evidence that any loosening would not cause a sudden spike in births; they petitioned the government again last year. Beijing has still not approved any changes.
Yet this long-running and inconclusive debate is having unexpected results. When I visited the city of Chongqing over a year ago, a local official told me out of the blue that Beijing might soon announce a national two-child policy. "We are eagerly awaiting that," he said. In Dongguan, one person told me that anyone could have two children five years apart; another said that any resident of a major city who had a daughter could now have a second child four years later. None of these things is true. But they reflect a widespread feeling among officials and average people that draconian controls are no longer needed. "China's population is aging very fast, so there will be too many only children in the future. So the policy does not have to be as strict as before," I was informed by my migrant friend Chunming, a saleswoman for a chain of traditional-style teahouses. She is unmarried and has no need to know about family-planning policies, but she sounded as authoritative as a government spokesman.
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Mar 21, 2013 23:46
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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quote:
A man in a wheelchair detonated a home-made explosive in Beijing airport on Saturday evening, injuring himself and sending smoke billowing through the exit area of the international arrivals section of Terminal 3.
Individual Chinese unable to win redress for grievances have in the past resorted to extreme measures, including bombings, but such incidents are rare amid the tight security of airports, and the motive in this case is not yet known.
There were no other injuries and operations were normal after the blast, the airport said on its microblog, while official news agency Xinhua said the man detonated a loud explosive device, but gave no details.
State broadcaster China Central Television said the explosion took place just feet outside the door from which arriving international passengers depart after picking up their luggage. It was not clear why the man was at the airport.
An airport spokeswoman declined to speculate about the man's motive, saying airport police were still investigating. Police declined to comment. Officials said the bomber was being treated for his injuries.
A Reuters witness said things had returned to normal about 90 minutes after the explosion and there were no signs of extra security.
Explosives are relatively easy to obtain in China, home to the world's largest mining and fireworks industries.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/20/us-china-explosion-beijing-idUSBRE96J04F20130720
How likely is it that this is just an isolated incident like the article says?
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Jul 20, 2013 13:54
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May 1, 2024 13:47
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- Xandu
- Feb 19, 2006
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It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
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Apparently
quote:
Chinese media quickly named the alleged bomber as Ji Zhongxing, from Heze in Shandong province and gave his date of birth as 1979.
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A 2006 blog post, purportedly written by Mr Ji, circulated online on Saturday evening. In it, Mr Ji claimed that he had been left disabled after police used a “steel tube” to beat him in June that year.
Mr Ji reportedly demanded around £36,000 in compensation but was unsuccessful in his claim.
A lawyer from the firm who handled Mr Ji's case, who named himself as Mr Zhou said he could not remember the case.
There was no answer at the offices of the local government in Fuchun , Zhencheng county, Heze, Shandong.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10192343/Explosion-in-Beijing-airport-as-man-appears-to-detonate-wheelchair.html
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Jul 20, 2013 14:11
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Feb 24, 2012 00:22
