China’s New Social Enforcement Campaign: Beijing Turns to Social Media Tattletales in Battle Against Smoking
Posted: April 13, 2015 Filed under: Asia, China, Health and Social Issues | Tags: Associated Press, Beijing, Bo Xilai, China, Communist Party of China, Cultural Revolution, Hu Yaobang, Lin Biao, Mao Zedong, Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, Zhao Ziyang 2 Comments
Alyssa Abkowitz and Hu Chao report: Smokers in Beijing get ready: law enforcement officers won’t be the only ones trying to catch you smoking indoors.
“To pump up attention for the WeChat account, the government is inviting people to vote for a hand gesture that residents can use to try and discourage people from smoking.”
Beijing’s government is rallying residents to help enforce the country’s new smoking rules, which will be implemented on June 1. The rules ban smoking in restaurants, bars and other indoor public places, with maximum fines of 200 yuan (about $33) for individuals and 10,000 yuan for organizations and companies.
“The government-suggested images include: I do mind（我介意）,which depicts a woman covering her nose with her hand, Don’t（不可以）, in which the woman is holding her palm like a stop sign, and Please stop（请停止）, in which the woman makes a time-out signal with her hands.”
The government this week launched an account on the social messaging app WeChat to allow residents to report violators, either by uploading images or videos of smokers caught in the act. In addition, the account offers a bevy of anti-smoking information including the full text of the regulations, anti-smoking videos featuring famous CCTV anchors, and warnings about the health impact of smoking (such as the fact that it can negatively affect the quality of one’s sperm).
“But the campaign will face an uphill push in a country where smoked-filled banquet rooms are a routine part of doing business, and the state-run tobacco industry generates a whopping 956 billion yuan ($156 billion) in taxes and profits.”
Asking the public to help police the nation is a familiar thread in Chinese history. During the Cultural Revolution, neighbors were encouraged to report anti-revolutionary actions of one another. More recently, the government has urged citizens to report polluters by calling an official hotline. Read the rest of this entry »
‘Corrective Measures’: China Asks Officials to Stop Plagiarizing Their Self-Criticisms
Posted: January 22, 2015 Filed under: Asia, Censorship, China, Politics | Tags: Agence France-Presse, Beijing, Bo Xilai, China, Chinese language, Civil Servant, Communism, Communist Party of China, Hollywood, Hu Jintao, Karl Marx, Ling Jihua, Progressivism, Socialism, Xi Jinping, ZHOU YONGKANG 1 Comment
Even for a Marxist, writing original self-critical confessions is hard. Why not copy the confessions of a fellow transgressor?
William Kazer reports: China’s communist leaders may be taking a break from their battle with tigers and flies. Now the ruling party seems to be focusing on copycats.
While the nation’s graft-busters have been wrestling with corrupt officials big and small, the enforcers of party discipline are worried about another troublesome matter — too many insincere self-criticisms, according to the People’s Daily. Self-criticisms are reports officials are asked to regularly produce evaluating their own performance.
“Some cadres copied materials already on file or drafted similar accounts,” the newspaper wrote of official self-criticisms. “Copying or borrowing of existing material should be immediately pointed out.”
Those who are holding up a magnifying glass to examine the behavior of party cadres and ensure party guidelines are followed are apparently complaining about the rank and file not taking their self-criticisms seriously. Problem officials seem to be behaving more like schoolboys — copying the confessions of fellow transgressors.
“The problems with self-criticisms apparently don’t stop at plagiarism. According to the People’s Daily, sometimes officials have made ‘self-criticisms that were superficial, their criticisms were not serious and their corrective measures inadequate.’”
The People’s Daily said in its online edition that some 45 top party officials have been put in charge of ensuring party discipline at the local level and laying down the law as stated by Communist Party chief Xi Jinping. Read the rest of this entry »
Former Beijing Tycoon Executed for Murdering 8 People
Posted: April 24, 2014 Filed under: Asia, China, Crime & Corruption | Tags: Asia, Beijing, Bo Xilai, Bribery, China, Liu, Shenzhen, Sichuan, Xi Jinping, Xinhua News Agency 1 CommentFormer Beijing multimillionaire Xia Keming and his three companions were executed on Tuesday for killing eight people between 1999 and 2007, the Beijing Times observed on Wednesday.
Xia once served as a civil servant in Beijing. He was sentenced in 1988 to three years in prison for the illegaldealingof train tickets. After being released, Xia started a business in Shenzhen, and also owned 19 percent of shares in a Beijing-based company valued at more than 100 million yuan ($16 million).
Xia Keming (R1) and his three companions (Photo source: people.cn)
The murder spree began when Xia asked his brother Xia Kezhi and two of his ex-cellmates to kill a business partner surnamed Liu.
In the following eight years, the four killed seven other people, including Xia Keming’s business partners, mistress and acquaintances.
To cover up their crimes, the gang bribed officials with cash, cars, luxury watches and expensive rosewood furniture. Read the rest of this entry »
How to Get Censored on China’s Twitter
Posted: November 16, 2013 Filed under: Censorship, China | Tags: Bo Xilai, censorship, China, China Digital Times, ProPublica, Sina Weibo, Twitter, Weibo, Xu Zhiyong 2 Comments
ProPublica has launched an interactive feature of tens of thousands of images that have been censored from Weibo, in an effort to show what topics are likely to be targeted:
How Sina Weibo censors its users is as revealing as the content that appears on the site, and for the past five months, we’ve been watching the watchers. We’ve created an interactive feature, launching today, that allows readers to see and understand the images that censors considered too sensitive for Chinese eyes.
[…] For five months, our software has been quietly checking 100 Weibo accounts, keeping track of every post containing an image and returning repeatedly to see if those posts were deleted. Our collection has grown to nearly 80,000 posts, of which at least 4,200 — more than 5 percent — were deleted by censors.
U.S. Businessman Accused of Being Mob Boss in China
Posted: October 18, 2013 Filed under: China, Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice | Tags: Anna Wu, Bo Xilai, China, Guangdong, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Xi Jinping Leave a comment(BEIJING) — Gillian Wong reports: When more than 500 policemen swooped in to arrest 40 suspected gangsters in southern China last year, the alleged kingpin was a Los Angeles businessman who had hoisted an U.S. flag amid a crowd to welcome Xi Jinping, now China’s president, to California.
Location of Guangzhou in the province
Vincent Wu’s children and lawyers say he’s an upstanding, philanthropic Chinese-American entrepreneur who has been framed by business foes who want to seize his assets, including a nine-story shopping mall. But police in the southern city of Guangzhou say he was a ruthless mob boss who led gangsters with nicknames such as “Old Crab” and “Ferocious Mouth.”
Wu is expected to stand trial within weeks in Guangzhou on charges of heading a crime gang that kidnapped rivals, threw acid at a judge, set fire to farmers’ sheds, operated illegal gambling dens and committed other offenses. Wu has told his lawyers that police interrogators tortured him into confessing.
Chinese Social Media Gripped by Street Vendor’s Execution
Posted: September 26, 2013 Filed under: Asia, China, Crime & Corruption | Tags: Beijing, Bo Xilai, China, China Youth Daily, Shenyang, Sina Weibo, Teng Biao, Zhang Leave a comment
Zhang Jing carries the ashes of her husband Xia Junfeng, a 36-year-old street vendor, from Dongling Funeral Home on Sept. 26 in Shenyang, China
“Early this morning, the Court sent its people to summon me to see Xia Junfeng for the last time,” Zhang Jing, a young woman in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, wrote on her Sina Weibo microblog account on Wednesday morning. “I feel like I’m going crazy, but I’m getting ready to go now.” Accompanied by police escorts, she then rode to the detention center where her 36-year-old husband had been held for the last four years. After they said their last goodbyes, he was put to death—marking the tragic end of case that has sparked outrage and despair across China. Read the rest of this entry »
Bo Xilai found guilty on all charges, sentenced to life in prison
Posted: September 21, 2013 Filed under: Asia, Breaking News, China, Crime & Corruption | Tags: Bo Xilai, Bo Yibo, China, CNN, Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping, Intermediate people's court, Mao Zedong 2 Comments
Beijing (CNN) — A court in eastern China sentenced Bo Xilai — the former rising star of the ruling Communist Party who fell from power amid a scandal involving murder, betrayal and financial skullduggery — to life in prison Sunday.
Bo received the life sentence for bribe-taking, as well as 15 years for embezzlement and seven years for abuse of power. Read the rest of this entry »
Academics Launch Fake Social Network to Get an Inside Look at Chinese Censorship
Posted: September 16, 2013 Filed under: Censorship, China, Science & Technology | Tags: Bo Xilai, censorship, China, Harvard University, M.I.T., Sina Weibo 1 Comment
New research shows China’s online censorship relies on a competitive market where companies vie to offer the best speech-suppressing technology and services.
Fascinating item from Tom Simonite, MIT Technology Review: Nine years after Mark Zuckerberg quit Harvard to build Facebook, one of the university’s political science professors, Gary King, decided this year it was time to launch his own social media site. But King didn’t set up his Chinese social network to make money; instead, he wanted to get an insider’s view of Chinese censorship, which relies on Internet providers censoring their own sites in line with government guidelines. King won’t disclose his site’s URL, to protect people involved with his project. Read the rest of this entry »
Horror on high seas: Deadly tale told at China trial
Posted: September 5, 2013 Filed under: China, Global | Tags: Bo Xilai, China, Chinese New Year, Japan, Shidao, Wang, West Africa, Zhang Leave a commentMutineers turned on each other, split into regional gangs on fishing vessel far from home
(Photo: Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY)
SHIDAO, China – Frightened for their lives, four Chinese fishermen caught on a boat gone mad with mutiny dropped a home-made raft in the Pacific 1,000 miles from Japan. Read the rest of this entry »
In drive to strengthen one-party rule, China treats Internet ‘as ideological battlefield’
Posted: September 3, 2013 Filed under: China | Tags: August, Beijing, Bo Xilai, China, China Digital Times, Communist Party, Human Rights Watch, Jerome Cohen, New York Times, Peking University, South China Morning Post, Xi Jinping 2 Comments
Activist Liu Ping: one of many recent victims of crackdown on dissent
From Democracy Digest:
Since Xi Jinping came to power just less than a year ago, China Digital Times notes, hopes that his administration would oversee substantial political reform have been dissipating amid frequent crackdowns on the country’s media and developing civil society. An infographic from the South China Morning Post plots arrests under the new administration’s watch to show that state suppression of the politically-liberal is gaining momentum.
The Economist outlines the Communist authorities’ efforts to shape public opinion by treating the Internet as an ideological battlefield:
Marxist School Now in Session for Chinese Journalists
Posted: August 31, 2013 Filed under: China | Tags: Bo Xilai, China, China Media Project, Hong Kong University, Journalism and Media Studies Centre, Marxism, Sina Weibo, Xi Jinping Leave a comment
Journalists take pictures and videos of a screen displaying a court’s microblog page during Bo Xilai’s trial.
China has ordered all journalists at state-run media to attend Marxism classes, the latest in a series of recent government moves to assert control over the press.
The Communist Party’s Propaganda Department is requiring the country’s entire official press corps—more than 300,000 reporters and editors—to attend at least two days of Marxist classes this month. State officials have enforced similar “press re-education” programs over the past decade. But this week’s move signals a renewed sense of urgency by authorities, who are trying hard to control the media in an era of microblogging platforms like Sina Weibo and Tencent Holdings’ WeChat, said David Bandurski, editor of the China Media Project, a University of Hong Kong project tracking Chinese media reform.
Mr. Bandurski said the core focus of the classes will likely be on the Marxist view of journalism, which instructs reporters to listen to and support the party and help guide public opinion. Accordingly, the focus for journalists will be on reminding them to help foster stability and support for the government, and to listen to senior leaders in selecting what to publish, he said.
Who’s Behind the “Biggest Cyberattack” in China’s History
Posted: August 26, 2013 Filed under: China, War Room | Tags: Bo Xilai, botnet, China Internet Network Information Center, cyberattack, DDoS attack 1 CommentAmid the Bo Xilai trial and a US-China spat, a number of potential culprits could be behind the DDoS attack.
By Tyler Roney
Image credit:flickr/Tricia Wang 王圣捷
In what is being called the “biggest cyberattack in its history”, China’s internet was brought down by widespread distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Sunday.
In what is being called the “biggest cyberattack in its history”, China’s internet was brought down by widespread distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Sunday.
As The Wall Street Journal reported, no one is quite sure where the attacks came from, but the timing is certainly interesting from a number of standpoints. Furthermore, some reports are saying that the attack was so simple that it could have involved hundreds of hackers or a single individual with a really big botnet.
Regardless of whether it was angry “internet freedom” hackers or domestic showboaters, people will be keen to find out who took down the Middle Kingdom’s Internet during the controversial Bo Xilai trial.
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