Fights between Chinese citizens and cheng-guan (unofficial police)

Bruce Lee's punch

Current Pro-democracy Protest in Hong Kong

Pro-democracy protesters gather in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong on October 1, 2014.

The current pro-democracy protest has been discussed thoroughly here in Larry Diamond's column.

I clearly support the protesters against C.Y. Leung's government, which is factually a branch of Beijing government, not a highly self-governance as expected. The reason of my position is simple: I do not trust China Communist Party, which is the agent of tyranny, dictator and disaster. China Communist Party makes the whole Mainland China the biggest prison around the world, now it wants include Hong Kong as part of the prison, how can I support the Beijing government?

As for the possible solution of the protest in Hong Kong, I agree Larry Diamond in here:

China’s rulers are now stuck in a trap of their own making. If they brutally repress mass demonstrations, as they did a quarter century ago, they will gravely damage their international legitimacy, wreck prospects for closer relations with Taiwan, and destroy the civic fabric of Hong Kong. If they do what they should have done months ago — negotiate — they fear they will look to be capitulating to mass pressure, thereby inviting more of it in a country where hundreds of local-level protests erupt daily. Thus they will probably wait, hoping the protests will ebb, while preserving the option of dumping the current Chief Executive, C.Y. Leung, as a sacrificial lamb.

Top 10 Craziest Stories from China in 2013

LOL NEWS//China is Famous for Non-originality

Behold, You Mortals! Kneel Down to the Greatest Powerful Man in the World!

This image helps to understand the power of Xi Jinping, the leader of China:

And maybe there are more positions awaiting him.

//Dear President of China

Thomas L. Friedman

MEMO to: China’s President Xi Jingping.
From: A Friend of Your Country.

Dear President Xi, in recent years there’s been a tug of war inside the global investment community between those who think China is a bubble about to burst and therefore a “screaming short” and those who believe that China has big problems — but also big tools and smart leaders — and will find a way forward, even if at a more normal growth rate. I lean toward the second camp, but looking at some of China’s recent behavior I’m beginning to wonder: Maybe your system is more frail than I thought?

I say that as someone who wants to see China succeed in empowering its people to realize their full potential so they can better participate in shaping China’s future and integrate with the world. Anyone who is telling you that American policy makers want to see China fail doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Our two economies and fates are totally intertwined today.

So, I wish China’s people well. Many Americans do. That is why I am writing you today. I believe you’re about to make a terrible, terrible mistake.

The Chinese-language websites of The Wall Street Journal and Reuters were recently blocked, and those of Bloomberg News and The New York Times have both been blocked for months. More important, The Times and Bloomberg together have more than 20 journalists in China whose visas are up for renewal by the end of December and, so far, your government is refusing to act on them — in apparent retaliation for both organizations exposing the enormous wealth amassed by relatives of senior Chinese leaders, including yours. The rumor is that you intend to deny both organizations the right to report from China.

China experts tell me that this unprecedented crackdown is prompted by your feeling that we’ve crossed a red line. You apparently thought the rules of the game were that the foreign press, local media and social media could write anything they wanted about corruption and social protests at the local and provincial level — indeed, it was a way for the central government to track and curb corruption — but that such focus should never be brought to the financial dealings of the top leaders of the Communist Party.

Sir, if a red line has been crossed, it has been by your officials and by technology. How so? There have been enough small stories in your own media — tips of icebergs — that suggest a widespread amassing of assets by family members of the most senior Communist Party officials. This kind of asset grab may not be illegal in all cases, but it surely could not happen at this scale without people taking advantage of their positions and the lack of transparency at the top.

Just last March, Chinese authorities quickly deleted from the blogosphere photos of a fatal Beijing car crash, believed to involve the son of a close ally of then-President Hu Jintao. The car was a Ferrari. The driver was killed and two young women with him badly injured. How could such a young man afford a Ferrari?

There was no way the foreign press was going to permanently ignore such stories that so many Chinese were talking about online. And that became even more true with the financialization of your economy and the emergence of a shareholding culture that required your companies and markets to comply with international norms for public filings of corporate structures and shareholders.

It was inevitable that once those filings were in place reporters in China would, as we did, hire accountants and lawyers to scrutinize these public records and discover things — like the fact that former Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s 90-year-old mother, a retired schoolteacher, had in her name an investment in a large Chinese financial services company valued around $100 million and Wen’s son, daughter, younger brother and brother-in-law had all also become extraordinarily wealthy.

Who crossed the red line here? We’d argue that it was some of your colleagues and their kids in opting for industrial-scale greed — combined with the new technology to expose it. That technology is not going away, so the excesses and corruption better. The Times and Bloomberg did your leadership a huge service in exposing this. It was a warning heart attack. The No. 1 cause of death of Chinese regimes in history is greed and corruption.

If you throw all our correspondents out of China, I can tell you exactly what will happen: They will set up offices in Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea and do nothing other than comb through financial records from afar, without the balancing alternative to travel in China, meet and hear from Chinese people face to face, and write with nuance about other issues. Also, it will force us to evict your journalists. We will not let you enjoy our openness while you blind us.

President Xi, you are right that exposure of huge, high-level asset grabs poses an existential threat to your party’s rule. But you’re wrong if you blame those exposing these excesses rather than those perpetrating them.

When China was taking off in the 1980s and 1990s, it could get away with maintaining open markets with a closed political system. I don’t believe that will be possible in this century, certainly not to the degree of the past. Over the last 10 years, the world has gone from connected to hyper-connected. The net effect is that in more and more countries — including China — wealth is getting concentrated at the top, but, at the same time, more power to speak and organize is being distributed at the bottom and more power to see — transparency — is being injected everywhere.

CHINA has more than 300 million micro-bloggers on your Twitter equivalent, Weibo, half of China is now on the Internet and China has 1 billion cellphones in use, many with cameras. There is no way in such a world that the focus on corruption and financial excesses can just stay localized. See dictionary for: Occupy Wall Street, Tahrir Square and Edward Snowden. They are all stories of what happens when wealth gets concentrated at the top, power gets distributed at the bottom and transparency gets injected everywhere.

Beijing ought to be concerned about what the general public will do if the secretive, back-room dealing that has enriched some elites — which every day more Chinese can see and discuss among themselves — remains a forbidden topic for public discussion and reform, and therefore mass protest becomes the only option to address it.

President Xi, for your sake and the sake of stability in China, please don’t make the mistake of blaming the messengers. The Great Chinese Firewall you need to construct can’t be against the truth. It has to be against corruption.

Sincerely yours,

A Friend of China.

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China's ADZ Demonstrates Its Over-self-conceit

The China's claim of ADZ, short for Air Defence Zone, and the reactions of its neighbors (mainly the US, Japan and South Korea), demonstrates China's over self-conceit.

China "Air Defence Zone" Challenged Continuously

Image from weibo.com; Translated by me.

News source:
China claimed an expanding Air Defence Zone including Diaoyu Islands/Senkaku Islands the disputed territory; however US, Japan, South Korea declared continuously they would not obey China's instruction and continue their exiting flight plans.

Gary Locke, the U.S. Ambassador to China, Resigned

Gary Locke, the US Ambassador to China, made a statement about his resign. He said he would leave Beijing for Seattle in the beginning of 2014.

Locke did not explain his real reasons why he resigned, but I think he had to resign because he may have caught lung cancer due to the choking Beijing air if he continued his job as an ambassador. See my meme cartoon above.

--OK, I am just kidding above. I believe Locke did not resign for catching lung cancer; however, the Beijing air condition is doubtlessly very terrible:

Beijing: The Paradoxical Economy Policy Orientation

The Third Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee just finished, and Wallstreet Journals (WSJ) hailed to the session and commented that the session would make China's economy more promising.

They may have made a mistake.

WSJ reported, in the official paper unveiled, China's Communist Party (CCP) affirmed that it would allow the market to be more "decisive" in the allocation of resources. It looked like that China intended to open more state-control resource markets to non-state enterprises, including foreign-invested companies.

Well, my point is negative, because CCP also declared clearly that the State-owned Enterprises'(SOE) dominance in the economy must be guaranteed. So here comes the contradiction: one hand, Chinese government intends to keep the dominance of SOE's, in another words, the monopoly of SOE would be reinforced rather than be weakened; on the other hand, it also said to allow the market to be more "decisive", meaning that there would be more competition, less monopoly. Then, can the two opposites co-exist? Can something is both black and white? I truly do not think so.

So I'm not so optimistic for China's economy in the near future, as monopoly-direction and competition-direction are both referred in the document of CCP's session, but I do not think the opposites may co-exist smoothly in the future.

China Decided to Establish the National Security Council

*KGB: KGB is short for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti(Russian), i.e., Committee for State Security(English)

The Third Plenary Session of 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee declared to establish two new bureaus, and one of them is the National Security Council.

This council is said to be established to improve the national security system and strategy. Yet, it seems a tradition for communist countries to set up a quasi-secret department to erase those dissidents or someone the government dislikes. The counterpart department KGB in Soviet Union is good at doing this job, and they are very efficient in the Great Purge.

It is not coincident that the leaders of communist countries are also the top leaders of these secret security councils. Lenin established KGB(its predecessor), Stalin extended it greatly, and Putin was one of the leaders of KGB, and now Mr Xi Jinping, the leaders of China, joined them.

This history will not end until the end of communist parties.

Chinese Protesters Over-reacted to Jimmy Kimmel's "Kids' Table"

As a Chinese guy, I do think that the Chinese protesters over-reacted to Jimmy Kimmel and ABC about the "Kids' Table" issue.

First, most Chinese protesters do not understand the connection between the Kids' Table show and the novel "Lord of the Flies"; they do not know this is Not a racist talk show but a serious conference about human nature.

Second, some Chinese protesters were assigned by domestic orders. These people protested just for some money.

Last but not least, the protesters are so weak inside to protest in America, why not try to protest in China for some China's sin? They dare not to, because they know they would be killed or jailed if they did so. The reason why they are able to protest is because America is a democratic country. They enjoy the freedom of protesting in America, but they oppose other's freedom of speech. What a sarcasm!

Jimmy Kimmel Unnecessary to Apologize for the Debatable "Kids' Table" Segment Show

During the Oct. 16 episode of ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live", host Kimmel held a "kids table" segment on the government shutdown. Kimmel posed this question to four kids: "America owes China a lot of money, $1.3 trillion. How should we pay them back" he asked. Right away, one child suggests "killing everyone in China."

This segment has now raised all sorts of issues. Some Chinese people protested as they took this TV show as a much insulting one. Domestic China's media, like CCTV, strongly criticized this segment also.

Well, in my opinion, the kid just publicized what the China's government has been doing then, so it is unnecessary for Jimmy Kimmel or ABC to say sorry to Chinese people. See below:

News source

Harbin, China: Citizen Dressed in Antichemical Mask against Air-pollution

A citizen in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang Province, northeast of China, dressed himself in anti-chemical mask to defend from choking air pollution lasting for a few days.

How to Walk a Panda? Let Russia Tell You

Exploring China: A Culinary Adventure Episode

Episode 1：Beijing

Episode 2: Sichuan

Episode 3: Yunnan & Kashgar

Episode 4: Canton & Taiwan

[Cartoon]: The Contemporary Situation in Xinjiang, China

Xinjiang is famous for its grapes; however, bleeding events in the past days made this province a dangerous place.

China: A Country Without Today nor Tomorrow

As a political tradition in current China, certain so-called "sensitive words" will be blocked in different anniversaries in Chinese search engines, including Sina weibo. The typical example is the anniversary of June 4 for every year.

It is understandable to know that the terms such as "six four", "24th", "candle" and "never forget" are all in the list of "sensitive words", however, sarcastically this year, this blocking list includes new words such as "Today" and "Tomorrow", as the pictures shown above. If you put the words in the search engine of Sina Weibo, no information will return based on certain laws and rules.

This blocking suggests nothing but that China is a country without Today nor Tomorrow!

Lots of Pictures in Memorializing the 1989 Crackdown on Tiananmen Square Protest

As is well known, Today (June 4) is the 24th anniversary of 1989 Tiananmen Square Protest, which was repressed soon and hundreds of young students and workers devoted their lives for democracy.

After the 1989 crackdown of Tiananmen Square Protest, the Communist Party of China decided to build a regime of totalitarianism in China, as they put themselves as the leaders of this country and they want to profit themselves with the power in their hands, so they deny the very history and try to make the people forget it in many ways (such as deleting certain webpages and blocking discussions online about it).

However, the people would not forget what happened in June 4, 1989, and many netizens put their works online to commemorate the 24th anniversary of the democracy protest. Here are some of them: