The Mysterious Visit in the US Consulate

Some rumours going on here - please click here:
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Bo Xilai’s deputy visits US consulate, jeopardising his admission to the politburo
The powerful Chongqing Communist Party leader wants to become a member of the country’s most powerful institution. After a suspicious meeting with US diplomats, his right-hand man is arrested, threatening his rise to power.
Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Wang Lijun, the powerful right-hand man of Chongqing Communist Party secretary Bo Xilai, visited the US consulate in Chengdu on Monday where he stayed for the day. Afterwards, he was relieved of his duties and sent to Beijing on “stress leave”. China’s blogosphere has been abuzz ever since.

Chongqing Committee Secretary Bo Xilai heads a campaign for a “return to Maoism”. launched two years ago, the latter’s aim is to change the central government’s policies. In Chongqing, this has been accompanied by a Maoist revival. The Cultural Revolution has also found an echo in the actions of local security forces (in Wang’s hands until yesterday) with municipal guards exercising enormous discretionary power.

Both Washington and Beijing confirmed Wang’s consular visit. Equally, both sides refused to give any details about the visit or speculate about rumours that Wang sought political asylum.

"The meeting was scheduled.” US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. Vice-Mayor Wang “did visit the consulate and he later left the consulate of his own volition."

In Chongqing, the period in office of the two former allies remains a controversial issue among residents. As police chief, one resident said, he was successful in cracking down on crime but fundamental rights were ignored. Others suggest that Wang’s strong-arm tactics led Bo to get rid of him before the 18th General Congress of the Communist Party where he is expected to be raised to the politburo.

Bo’s political future and speculation about Wang’s visit to the US consulate have lit up China’s blogosphere. On sina.com (China’s version of Twitter), people are wondering why he met Us consular officials.
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REUTERS is calling this a bizarre drama........please click here:
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China's buffeted and ambitious Bo Xilai stays afloat

By Michael Martina

CHONGQING, China | Thu Feb 9, 2012 5:31am EST

(Reuters) - A bizarre consular drama in southwest China is just the latest to buffet Bo Xilai, the suave politician angling to join the Communist Party's inner circle, but on Thursday residents of the city he runs fancied his chances of surviving.

China's communist leaders like to keep political intrigue out of public sight and the feverish speculation about Bo's longtime ally and chief crime-fighter, Wang Lijun, would be enough to sink less skilled politicians.

The city of Chongqing said on Wednesday deputy mayor Wang had taken sick leave, fanning rumors that he had been purged and sought refuge at the U.S. consulate in nearby Chengdu. The U.S. State Department confirmed that Wang Lijun, visited the consulate, but said it was a "scheduled meeting."

The episode could still blot former commerce minister Bo's prospects of climbing into the party's Standing Committee, which makes key decisions, when a new lineup is settled late this year. But China's state-run papers stayed largely mute on Wang, suggesting official desire to cool speculation after an uproar online.

"I think Bo Xilai is a bit like the Chinese version of Newt Gingrich -- he's so battle-scarred that does this really add or take away from a guy who is controversial?" said Kerry Brown, head of the Asia Programme at Chatham House, a London foreign policy institute, referring to the Republican aspirant to the White House.

"If he's known for being a controversial character, I don't think these things have a big impact," Brown said of Bo. "It may just as well work to his advantage."

RED FAMILY, BLUE SUITS

In Chongqing, a sprawling municipality on the banks of the Yangtze River, residents said recent events had not changed their view of Bo, who has won public support and national attention for tackling crime gangs and pursuing a more egalitarian growth model.

Chinese citizens can't vote for their leaders. But an informal poll on the city's steep streets suggested it was too early to count out Bo, whose ill-concealed ambition and privileged background have attracted naysayers.

"From almost every perspective, Chongqing is better since Bo came," said Wu Jun, 25, when asked about Bo, a previous mayor of Dalian, a port city in eastern China.

"Look at Dalian too. When Bo was there, they also were developing well. So there is something to the man. I think a lot of people my age like him because he seems real," he said, adding that he wasn't concerned about the rumors swirling around Wang.

Bo Xilai's father, Bo Yibo, was a revolutionary comrade of Mao Zedong, making his son one of the "princelings" -- sons and daughters of the Communist Party's elite. Bo Xilai is reputed to have attacked his father in the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), when Mao urged youth to embrace radicalism.

Nowadays, Bo prefers sleek blue suits to Mao suits, and had his son, Bo Guagua, educated at an expensive English private school and Oxford University, where the younger Bo was linked to the Adam Smith Institute, a bulwark of pro-market ideas.

Photos of younger Bo partying hard at Oxford, which circulated widely on the Chinese internet, also do not help create an image of family dedication to tradition. The younger Bo has been spotted driving a expensive cars around Beijing.

WHAT PROBLEM?

The official Chongqing Daily heaped praise on Chongqing's anti-crime crackdown that Wang was instrumental in organizing, but it did not mention Wang.

"The evil criminals have been destroyed, the people are clapping and cheering. The fight against the evil forces has been fully affirmed by the superiors and the community," said the article, giving Bo prominent mention.

"Most people in Chongqing know about this news," said a clean-cut man in his late 50s who declined to give his name.

"If it is true, most of us find it very surprising. Only a few weeks ago Wang was in the papers for his contributions to fighting crime," he said, adding that the city was safer after Bo's anti-crime campaign.

On China's hugely popular "Weibo" microblog service, the rumors about Wang sparked enthusiastic debate, attracting more than 500,000 posts -- unusually free discussion in a country where censors quickly delete sensitive political online messages.

The search terms "Wang Lijun" and "Vacation-style treatment" ranked No.3 and No.4 on the list of most searched terms. Searches for "Bo Xilai" were blocked, but the names of senior leaders usually are.

Still, some microblog users managed to defy censors with oblique references to Bo, 62, who has advertised his hopes for a place in the central leadership through a campaign of "red" songs and culture extolling Mao's achievements.

"What great luck, if (we) allow these people who harbor ambition in their hearts and have red songs all over their mouths (to) gain power, the Chinese people will go back to the Cultural Revolution," said a user called "Music person Ma Jun."

The visit to the consulate was an "isolated incident" that had been resolved, Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai said, adding that it would not affect a visit to the United States by Vice President Xi Jinping next week.

(Additional reporting by Sui-Lee Wee, Sabrina Mao and Ben Blanchard; Editing by Nick Macfie and Don Durfee)

WORLD

CHINA

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The legacy of Wukan

This one I just copy in without any further comment from my side. Please read yourself - this is very long - but will help all the outside readers to understand some of the serious challenges CHINA is facing - this is very serious - it is from here - click it !
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By David Bandurski | Posted on 2012-01-30

The standoff last December between local authorities and villagers in Wukan, prompted by deep anger among villagers over corrupt land deals and the suspicious death of a protest leader in police custody, was one of the biggest stories of 2011. But the saga of Wukan, which is ongoing despite pledges by Guangdong’s top leadership to meet the demands of protesters, could continue to have an impact this year and beyond.
Some say the Wukan incident, an act of organized civil disobedience that infuriated local Party officials (and, no doubt, quite a few senior leaders as well), has established a “model” for villages facing seizure of their land, one of the most common causes of so-called “mass incidents” (群体事件) in the countryside and in areas outside developing cities. Some have cited Wukan as an example in calling for democratic reforms in China.
But even as international attention gradually shifts away from Wukan, it remains to be seen whether the villagers’ demands will ultimately be met — and whether provincial leaders will live up to their promises.
Discussion of Wukan continues inside China, but public discussion of its deeper implications is a sensitive matter.
A January 27 blog post on Wukan made by lawyer Yuan Yulai (袁裕来) to his blog on the Caixin Media platform was deleted by internet censors. Yuan followed up the same day by posting news of the deletion on Sina Weibo. Including an image file for the post (below), he wrote: “Is there no hope for the Wukan incident? Are leaders now setting the tone? (Why was this deleted? Is this still propaganda policy?)”
Yuan Yulai’s microblog post was also subsequently deleted. But the text-as-image file he posted on Sina Weibo, which we archived, is pasted below. In the file Yuan shares an account of words spoken by an unnamed senior leader at a recent meeting on stability preservation, the mobilization of domestic security forces to combat social unrest:

A certain leader said in an internal address at the CCP Work Conference on Politics, Law and Stability Preservation: Right now there are tens of thousands of mass incidents [in China each year], mostly happening in rural townships and villages and remote regions, the causes being principally economic. These are convenient for us to independently resolve or break up. But if these spread to coastal cities and are transformed into political demands, the result would be unimaginable. Some comrades lack a real sense of the dangers involved, thinking we are over-reacting. It would be better for a clear directive from the central authorities to over-react than to fall short [of what is needed].
. . . The Wukan incident is far from finished. Can challenges to the leadership status of the Chinese Communist Party evade retribution? That is a page we cannot open, that no one dares open.

The following is a partial translation of a review by journalist Chen Jibing (陈季冰) of the Wukan incident published in Outlook China magazine. Chen also posted the article to his weblog at QQ.com.

The Example of Wukan
Chen Jibing (陈季冰)
January 20, 2012
1.
Ahead of the Chinese New Year holiday news came of the latest development in the Wukan story. According to news reports, three special work teams constituted by Guangdong province to explore the issues of collective land [use and appropriation in Wukan], village finances and breaches of law and Party discipline by village officials notified the villagers of Wukan of their findings in the initial phase [of their investigation] on December 30. According to Zeng Qingrong (曾庆荣), chairman of the standing committee of the Guangdong Provincial Commission of Discipline Inspection and deputy-head of the [provincial government's] supervisory office, who is serving as head of the special work team on breaches of law and discipline [in the Wukan case], they have already found that Xue Chang (薛昌), Wukan’s former Party branch chief, former village Party committee director Chen Shunyi (陈舜意) and others did indeed violate [Party] discipline in misappropriating collective assets of the village; a related personnel member in the marketing division of the Cooperative Association of Lufeng City Rural Credit Cooperatives (陆丰市农村信用合作社) pocketed 200,000 yuan in the process of land transfer (土地转让); various personnel in the Donghai Township State Land Office (东海镇国土所) of the Lufeng City Land and Resources Bureau (陆丰市国土局) accepted bribes in processing the transfer of land belonging to Wukan Village. At the same time, it has been initially established that some cadres from the Wukan Village Party Branch and village committee received rewards in the process of authorizing transfer of collective land [belonging to the village], and that some accounting staff in Wukan village are suspected of having personally used public funds [belonging to the village]. The cashier for the village committee, Zou Chai (出纳邹钗), also a committee member of the Party branch, has already been detained pending investigation for discipline violations (两规).
It was not long before this, owing to the direct intervention of the provincial Party leadership in Guangdong, that serious protests in Wukan Village, in [Guangdong's] Shanwei City, finally calmed down in late December. While for reasons known to all newspapers, television and other mass media kept quiet on this incident out of fear, it was the most hotly watched public opinion storm on China’s internet — and particularly on microblogs — for some time.
On December 21, deputy provincial Party secretary Zhu Mingguo (朱明国), who has represented Guangdong province in handling this incident, met face-to-face with the chief acting village representative, Lin Zuluan (林祖銮), and agreed to the principal demands of the protesting villagers, including: to suspend and fully investigate the property development project in which the villagers’ interests were harmed and for which village cadres and the government illegally sold [village] land; to carry out a full and comprehensive investigation of the death of protest leader Xue Jinbo (薛锦波) while in police custody on December 11, 2011, to return his remains, and to release several other villagers who were detained for their involvement in the protests.
What has most unprecedented meaning is that the [Guangdong provincial] authorities also formally acknowledged the “leadership committee” chosen and constituted by the villagers themselves for the purpose of the protests, and that they pledged resolutely that they would not seek to settle scores with villagers involved in the protests at some convenient later date (秋后算账).
[Village representative] Lin Zuluan at least believes that their protest movement has already achieved the things they set out to achieve, and he has told media that he is satisfied with the outcome. “The higher-level government [authorities] have treated this matter with utmost priority, so I have all confidence that we can satisfactorily resolve this dispute,” [he said].
The attitude of the Guangdong Party leadership set the tone for the handling of the incident: “The basic demand of the people of Wukan Village in Lufeng City is fairness, and errors certainly did exist in the work among the masses carried out by the grassroots Party leadership and government, so certain unreasonable actions on the part of the villagers can be understood.” Moreover, Guangdong Party Secretary Wang Yang (汪洋) pointed out clearly that, “The occurrence of the Wukan incident was both a matter of chance and a matter of necessity. This is the result of paying insufficient attention . . . to tensions building up in the process of economic and social development, and it is a necessary result of our being ‘hard on one hand and soft on the other’ (一手硬一手软).” This hard on the one hand and soft on the other points clearly to the government’s active promotion of economic development while it has been soft on social management (社会管理).
On December 22, the People’s Daily ran an article called, “What does the ‘turnaround in Wukan’ clue us in to?” (“乌坎转机”提示我们什么), which called on governments at all levels [in China] to “eliminate the ‘oppositional stance’ in dealing with the masses” (扫除面对群众的‘对手思维’). The article said: “Looking back on many mass incidents over the past few years and assessing their basic character, [one realizes that] the vast majority arise from the fact that the masses, in response to appeals on behalf of their vested interests, have received no satisfaction or relief. This tells us that local government must have a keen awareness of prevailing conditions in facing the interest demands of the masses, even if these involve tension and conflict.”
Zhu Mingguo, who has personally handled this incident, subsequently stated that the villagers of Wukan Village raised two demands in particular. The first concerned the question of land. Wukan Village has 9,000 mu [or 6 square kilometers] of land, and now more than 6,700 mu [or 4.46 kilometers, 75 percent of the total] have been sold, leaving just over 2,000 [mu [or 25 percent of the original land]. But the villagers have not been transformed into city residents [of Lufeng City], nor has the issue of basic living allowances from the city been resolved [CHECK]. The demands of the villagers are reasonable. The second issue raised by the villagers was that the affairs of the village were not handled openly. They said that village cadres were corrupt, and that they were not consulted over the issue of land sales. “The villagers said to me that under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party they had farmed the land without paying taxes and also enjoyed subsidies and free education. We do no oppose the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese Communist Party is good! What we oppose is the village selling the land without telling us,” [said Zhu Mingguo]. Zhu Mingguo added: “If these demands had been satisfied earlier, would this matter have built up to such an extent?”
I’m confident there is a great deal of truth to these words. But the heart of the problem is the question of how the ruling Party and government can create a system for themselves in which they must resolve demands of this kind. Perhaps there is nothing better than external pressure to bring people to their senses, and competition offers the best instruction. [CHECK]
2.
The so-called “Wukan incident” originated back in March 2011, at which point the villagers, who had suffered in silence for more than a decade, finally united in action. It is alleged that after local officials were involved in one particular corrupt land deal, furious villagers assaulted the village Party branch, and in the three months that followed numerous conflicts erupted.
The incident suddenly escalated in mid-December. On December 13, 42-year-old Xue Jinbo — who according to some accounts was 43 years old — one of several representatives chosen by Wukan villagers, died of heart failure while in [police] custody. Official media denied that wounds were present on Xue Jinbo’s body, [a claim made by Wukan villagers]. Reports said that on December 10 fellow detainees reported that Xue Jinbo was in a poor condition, and Xue Jinbo was then dispatched immediately to a nearby hospital, where he died after 30 minutes of emergency treatment. Reports also said that Xue Jinbo had a history of asthma and heart disease. [According to the reports], certification issued by forensic specialists at Guangzhou’s Sun-Yatsen Hospital shows that Xue Jinbo had no clear visible external wounds aside from bruising on his knees and wrists. The reports quoted the deputy director of this [forensic] center as saying that in his estimate the bruises on Xue Jinbo’s wrists had been caused by handcuffs, and that the bruises on his knees had been caused by kneeling on the ground.
Xue Jinbo and two others were detained on December 9, the justification being that they they were charged with destroying public financial affairs and jeopardizing public affairs. According to statements by local police, Xue Jinbo had led the unrest in Wukan due to tensions over land, [village] finances and issues with local election of [village] officials. At the time, [said police], he and other villagers had forced their way into the local government office and police station, and had destroyed six police vehicles. Police claim that these accusations were confirmed in two interrogations on September 9 and 10.
Xue Jinbo’s family has come to the conclusion that he was beaten to death. It is said that Xue Jinbo’s mother, wife and older brother went to view his body and discovered numerous wounds and bruises, including three points where his bones had been broken.
The anger of villagers then ignited and they openly opposed the local government. They organized large-scale demonstrations, and after cadres from the village Party branch and village committee deserted the village, they organized the village to govern itself, even setting up barricades and organizing hundreds of armed deputies to prevent violent suppression by police.
On December 15, acting Shanwei mayor Wu Zili (吴紫骊) gave a harshly worded denunciation [of the villagers]. He traced the incident back to two villagers who had been chosen to represent the villagers in negotiating with the government, Lin Zulian (林祖恋) and Yang Semao (杨色茂). He vowed to strike out firmly against “those principal figures who had planned and organized the inciting of villagers to smash and destroy public property, impede public affairs and other illegal and criminal activities.” He urged these people to turn themselves in. In a video appearing online on December 18, Shanwei Party Secretary Zheng Yanxiong (郑雁雄) harshly accused the villagers for using foreign media to invite the attention of the outside world to this local situation. Zheng Yanxiong said that the villagers had not sought the government but had instead sought out “rotten” foreign media, and “these media will only be happy when our socialist nation is broken and divided.”
These statements roused even greater feeling among the opposing [villagers]. After the above-mentioned language by Wu Zili, 8,000 of the villagers in a village with a total population of 20,000 again held demonstrations, the numbers double that of the previous day.
In fact, the full story of the Wukan incident is not all that complicated. When villagers attacked the offices of the village Party branch back in September last year, they accused the [local] government of selling off agricultural land in the village to a development company for a price as high as one billion yuan, and without providing villagers with reasonable compensation — and after [the transaction] pocketing 70 percent of the income [from the sale] for themselves.
As for the full and accurate situation in Wukan, perhaps we will have to wait patiently for the results of an independent and credible investigation. But cases like this of conflicts over interests emerging as a result of land appropriations (征地) are something that can be found everywhere in China today. According to research by Chinese Academy of Social Science professor Yu Jianrong (于建嵘), this sort of dispute over land accounts for two-thirds of all of all “mass incidents” in the countryside. Yu Jianrong estimates that since 1990 local officials in China have forcibly taken farmland totaling 6.72 million hectares, and owing to the gap between the actual market value of land and the amount of compensation for land actually given to farmers, [Yu estimates that] farmers have [collectively] lost around 2 trillion yuan (US$316 billion) in rights and benefits.
While the central Party leadership has said again and again that it will take concerted action against illegal land use, and has created new regulations prohibiting forced land seizures, demanding that farmers be compensated according to market value . . . and in fact this year’s No. 1 Document (一号文件) points out clearly that the portion of income from land appreciation given to farmers needs to be raised, all of these measures have met with fierce opposition from local governments. This is because at present the normal operations of local governments rely to a high-degree on so-called “land financing” (土地财政). According to a report released by the National Audit Office of the PRC in June [2011], local government debt nationally in China reached 10.7 trillion yuan, and of this 2.5 trillion yuan (or 23 percent) was guaranteed (担保) by land sales. By contrast, the estimate of total land sales income for local governments nationwide in 2010 was 2.9 trillion yuan. Which is to say that total income from land sales by local governments in 2010 is probably only sufficient to pay back the debt that will come due for the next few years.
All of this means that if the current trends do not change, standoffs like that at Wukan will most likely only increase steadily.
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3x iPhone Craziness MADE IN CHINA

Okay - it is just a mobile phone with a lot of extra features. Is it a status symbol ? Maybe for many mainland chinese it seems it is a status symbol. Or is it just the chance to buy & sell (even more expensive) on the black market. No judgement from my side. Enjoy this 3 videos:

Chinglish

At least the chinese writning seems collect - isnt it ?

It is time to go home for Chinese New Year !

It is the time again the BIG TRAVELLING starts. This one found on chinaSMACK here the wordings:
The following video was featured on popular Chinese video sharing website Youku’s home page, having accumulated over 560k views after just 7 hours of being uploaded, featuring several migrant workers overcome with emotion at the prospect of returning home to celebrate the Chinese New Year with their families…
From Youku:

Migrant workers overcome with emotion and shedding tears after getting their train tickets, happily going home to celebrate the new year!
Several migrant workers are interviewed in the 5 minute long video. Several migrant workers express happiness and are thankful that they received their wages in time for the Chinese New Year, perhaps allowing them to go home to celebrate with their families. Some thank their employers for paying on time, the government, and the media for helping bring public attention to their lives and hardships.

The second pair of migrant workers talk about their train trip, that it will take 2 days and 1 night in order to get home, requiring a one day stopover as well, and their train tickets are for standing room only, without seats for the entire ride. When asked by the interviewer how they can endure not having seats, they explain that they are in a rush to get home and there were out of options. It was only until they got their wages that they were able to go home at all.

They also share about who they are looking forward to see at home, such as their wives, children, and parents. When asked what he wants to say to his family at home on camera, the crying migrant worker says he’s bringing home the money he’s earned through blood and sweat, that he’s about to come home, and they can be reunited.

At time of translation, there were over 5000 comments by Chinese netizens in reaction to this video. Many of the comments reveal not only the attitudes of many Chinese people towards migrant workers, the government, and Spring Festival (aka Chinese New Year) but also various phenomenon common to the Chinese internet and the internet as a whole…



AND HERE COPIED IN SOME OF THE COMMENTS TO THIS VIDEO - It is long but interesting:

我倦了:
Train tickets are indeed really hard to purchase. When booking ticket, I called for half an hour and nearly a thousand calls before I booked them, and they’re not even to my hometown. Sigh.

lvzifeng765: (responding to above)
Amazing, over a thousand, half an hour, what planet is your home on?

不想独自快乐:
Everyone is equal… so where is the equality? Sigh… hope everyone can pay more attention to these people on the bottom levels of society and not discriminate against them nor treat them with indifference!

Z夜半猪叫:
This year, I’m again unable to go home to celebrate the [Chinese] new year. It’s been 3 years now that I haven’t been able to go home for new years…

whitetiger66:
I wish the best for those who go out to make a living, may you guys be safe and healthy!

jjdhfjj:
Fuck, even thanking the government [referring to the first interviewed migrant worker].

吸烟咳嗽:
This is what China’s most simple, down-to-earth ordinary common people are like, so easily satisfied [happy to just be able to go home for new year's].

阴间小鬼儿:
Money, is the life’s hope of migrant workers. We can’t say money is vulgar. It is hope. It is a necessity for the growth of the next generation.

序列号521:
I wish migrant workers the best. Those of you who were fighting for the sofa [there were a number of early comments simply posting "沙发", "SF", etc.], was it that hard to add a bit more wishing them well…?

幽忧囚1:
[I'm a] manly Shandong man, I’m not going to cry.

a51469958:
The so-called government leadership all say they want to care for workers of society’s lowest level, but it’s all just pretense. At least I haven’t felt it.

愤怒一拳:
China, if there weren’t migrant workers, then all of society would come to a standstill. You guys are the best.

康さくら:
May every one of them have a safe trip home…

87492330:
In the Heavenly Kingdom, going home for [Chinese] New Year’s has become a kind of extravagant wish.

铁腿军魂:
Simple and honest migrant workers, those wages are what you guys should get and you not getting them would be a failure of the government. You guys getting your wages should not be thanking the government, and instead you should thank those back home.

川西人士:
Thank you all for your contributions to the country. My brothers and sisters, it is your guys who are the main reason for the past 30 years of this country’s fast growth.

真三狂徒:
Online ticket booking was truly such a ball ache for those men who work on construction sites and don’t go online.
[Online train ticket booking was made available this year, but while it helped many, many migrant workers could not take advantage of it because they do not typically own computers or use the internet.

WQ有一个梦想:
I'm also a migrant worker. Those of us who come out to work basically only go home once a year. In the cities, the reason we scrimp and save is specifically so our family members in the rural countryside can live better, so I'm really moved. Migrant workers like us have very hard lives, truly using our own tears and sweat to make money, so I guess we can only wish ourselves luck.

19帝少: (responding to above)
It's so nice that I'm not a migrant worker, everyday eating my mother's food.

做个好人难吗:
Heart breaking. You guys saying thanks to the government, sigh, the government is laughing.

lajihao:
This is the tragedy of the government, where something as small as simply getting a train ticket can make them feel so blessed. China's ordinary common people are too kind.

热而已116：
There are actually people downvoting this video??? [At time of translation, this video had over 18k upvotes and over 300 downvotes]

霓宏灯:
Every year there is Chun Yun [the annual rush of Chinese people to return home to celebrate Chinese New Year's, often called the world's largest annual human migration], every year there are people who aren’t able to go home, every year there is constant news about these things, is [the government, the country] really unable to come up with effective measures to solve this problem? We are all taxpayers, so just what exactly has all our taxes been used on????

qianhaoyu1:
This world is so sad, those who can’t get train tickets want so much to go home, whereas I who can get train tickets don’t even want to go home.

zhiaikyo:
I don’t know why it was so irritating to hear that uncle say “thanks to the government”.

雪姐。:
Back in the day, my parents took the train to go home for the new year. Mom said that from Harbin to Fuyang, it wasn’t until Tianjin before there was a seat, and at that time my mother was pregnant with me too. My dad stood from Harbin all the way to Fuyang. Going home was really very tough.

Etudos:
Don’t they know how to go book tickets? These people are so cheap, just drink one less drink of alcohol and smoke one less cigarette. If it were me, you could beat me to death and I still wouldn’t take the train during the Spring Festival [Chinese New Year] season, or at least it’d have to be one of the faster trains.

zwx199: (responding to above)
f you

霓宏灯: (responding to Etudos)
That’s because you have money, rich guy!! Have you thought about those people who have to work hard every day to make money? If there are cheaper trains, do you think they would spend their hard-earned blood and sweat money [on more expensive trains]?

goarago:
Always talking about migrant workers, don’t people know the income of migrant workers is higher than university graduates?

五百万得主: (responding to above)
How much more hardship do migrant workers suffer compared to university graduates? However much more they earn is still deserved. What kind of work do university graduates do? What kind of work do migrant workers do?

绿宝石小明 (responding to goarago)
The work they do, do university graduates do? There are university graduates like you who do, so why don’t you go do it?

吚吇:
The 10 people who downvoted [the video] are beasts, may you be worse than pigs and dogs in your next life.

178297563: (responding to above)
Maybe those who downvoted were all downvoting the Railway Ministry.
[China's Ministry of Railways is widely reviled for all manner of ills. In addition to causing headaches and frustration for Chinese travelers during Chun Yun each year due to the difficulty of getting train tickets, often exacerbated by scalpers and corruption, the Railway Ministry has also recently been in headlines for horrific train crashes like 2011 July's Wenzhou train accident.]

yayaAie
Fuck, having to say thanks even for getting the money one is owed…

绿宝石小明:
Satisfying them is that easy… For us, it would just be getting something that is ours. I hate those unscrupulous evil businessmen/companies [who withhold wages from their migrant worker employees].

阳光sunshine:
Those who cheat migrant workers of their money these days, most of them are the contractors. These contractors are the real ones who are inhuman.

qq446947674:
Look at those country people, all bumpkins, sigh.

qq446947674:
The more I watch, the more I despise them. Country people, still wearing clothes from the 1980s, is it because they can’t afford new clothes?

梦幻大魔王: (responding to above)
It’s you again, you stupid cunt. You’re fucking about to be human flesh searched. Sooner or later you won’t even know how you died.

@水水900: (responding to above)
May those who look down on migrant workers die a violent death on the street on [Chinese] New Year’s Eve…

Your thoughts?

Foshan again !

This story just coming up - even if already some weeks old. It really seems Foshan is quite a special place full of aggression. Please read here:
quote
Sex-in-car driver arrested for murdering spotters

By Pan Zheng | 2011-12-22 | ONLINE EDITION

The driver who killed one worker and injured three others after they saw him having sex in the car has been officially arrested for murder though he said he felt the victims were robbers, the Guangzhou Daily reported today.

The man surnamed Jiang, 32, admitted that he was having sex with two prostitutes in his car parked on a road in Foshan City, Guangdong Province on the night of November 23.

Prosecutors said their affair was spotted by six young men who just finished their work in a nearby factory. They saw the trio in the car, looked at them for a while, and knocked at the car door out of curiosity.

Jiang was furious and got out of the car to argue with them. Their quarrel was stopped by one of the workers.

As the group walked away, Jiang went back to his car and charged at them in revenge. One worker surnamed He was crushed to death on the spot and three others were slightly injured.

A security camera recorded the whole scene. The video footage showed a white car speeding toward the four workers without braking and vanished immediately.

Jiang surrendered to the police on December 3 and argued that he thought the victims were robbers and tried to flee in haste.

But one prostitute surnamed Mao told the police that Jiang smiled after hitting them. His defense was not accepted by the prosecutors.

unquote

Absurd that just today I have received a GROUPON offer for a 1 night stay in a Foshan hotel.....

please click here !

Until now nobody signed on that offer - but this offer only need 2 people to sign on.

Not so sure if this is the perfect travel location.

It is Christmas now - and here is a story about some good-hearted chinese people !

Sometimes maybe you, my readers, think that I am so negative about China & the chinese People.
This is not the case. The case is that I am against all kind of unjustice, if this is in China or anywhere else in this world. As I am living (almost - as I am living in Hong Kong) in China since more than 13 years (including 5 years in Shanghai) I have learned a lot about people, traditions etc.
In my opinion the speed of China's economic development is much too fast for most of the people.
Out of this some very strange, irritating & wrong (bad) behavior has been developed by a lot of people:
Greed !  Wrong Ambitions ! Envy !
As Christmas is around the corner please see this video / story about a helping crowd in Wenzhou, most probably saving the life of a little child.
This is from here (including photos & video) click here: chinasmack

Crowd works together to lift car to save child

December 9th morning 7:25am, at the corner of Lane 40 Hangbiao Road in the city of Wenzhou, a child was run over and trapped under a car. With the SUV caught in the dilemma of not being able to go forward or back, someone shouted “lift the car!” Immediately over 10 people who had gathered around “one, two, three” used their collective strength [and lifted up the car]. The frightened child was carried out and unhurt. These people who helped did not know each other but their action both moved and warmed those at the scene and this city. Wenzhou people used action to once again demonstrate the “place of warmth” is a title fully deserved.

The next school bus tragedy

Before reading the story supplied by REUTERS let me allow some comments.
The problem with increasing traffic in China is overwhelming & the main problem is the drivers themselves:
Ruthless driving attitude of many drivers:
No sense of defensive driving. No idea about danger. Not keeping safety distances to the drivers before them. Crazy lane changing & speeding. No use of safety belts. Using the mobile during driving. Eating during
driving. The Government should urgently think about a way to get this problems under control as fast as possible: Strict penalties (financial - up to revoking driving license + jail terms) must be set- up for whatever kind of possible breach of traffic laws. There are too many accidents & crashes - most happen because of "human error". Please read the news from REUTERS here:

quote
Another school bus crash sparks fury in China

BEIJING

Tue Dec 13, 2011 8:58am EST
(Reuters) - Fifteen children were killed when a school bus crashed in China's eastern province of Jiangsu, state media said on Tuesday, the latest in a string of accidents fanning public fury across the country.

The bus rolled into a ditch as it veered off the road to avoid a pedicab, the Xinhua news agency said. At least eight children were injured in the accident, which happened after school on Monday.

"Students became trapped at the bottom of the overturned bus and drowned as water gushed into the wreck," Xinhua reported, citing Zhang Bin, a deputy head of the Fengxian county, where the accident happened.

The driver, he said, had been detained.

Xinhua gave conflicting accounts on the number of children on board the bus, but all the reports suggested it was not overloaded. Xinhua last reported that 29 were on board.

An outcry erupted across China in early November after 18 nursery school children were killed when a coal truck slammed into their overcrowded school van in northwestern China.


Two other accidents involving students were reported.
A bus crash in Zhumadian city in central Henan province killed two students on Tuesday and injured 20 people, seven seriously, Xinhua reported.
The bus had been rented by a middle school and was carrying 50 students and teachers when it rammed into a truck.

On Monday, a school bus carrying 59 children collided with a truck in Guangdong Province, in China's far south, injuring 37, media reported.

The deaths and injuries are sure to amplify calls for more spending on education and children's safety. In 1993, the Chinese government vowed to dedicate 4 percent of GDP to education.

"Close to 20 years have passed, and this has still not been achieved," said an editorial in the China Information News on Tuesday. "For some local governments, the proportion of GDP spent on education has actually fallen."

Chinese microbloggers were quick to express their anger about the Jiangsu crash.


"Another school bus accident kills 15 children. It's just a number in the eyes of Chinese officials. The only thing they care about is whether it impacts their future career," wrote Huiji Flying on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblog.

"Nothing is safe in China apart from leaders' cars, houses, money and concubines," added Yiran Anki.

The November tragedy prompted Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to promise more government funds to provide improved school bus services.

Rural areas are notorious for unsafe transport. Children face risky rides in ageing, badly maintained vans and trucks.

The school bus crashes also reflect the growing trend in rural China for schools to be concentrated in larger towns, abandoning villages where the population has been shrinking. Children then have to travel long distances to school or board away from their families.
(Reporting by Koh Gui Qing, Sabrina Mao, Chris Buckley, Ben Blanchard and Michael Martina; Editing by Ken Wills, John Newland and Ron Popeski)
unquote

The Hippocratic Oath is not existing in China !

Be careful if you are long-term in China, better make sure you have correct medical insurance which will help you to save your life, in case you have any kind of serious accident, emergency etc.

Short story about a very good friend:
Since 18 years in HK & China. Permanent HK resident, 50 years old.
2.5 years ago lost his job & a lot of money with some of his "good friends chinese business partners".
Close to be broke.
Married with a Chinese.
Stayed in Hangzhou & Hong Kong.
Before Christmas 2009 suddenly got a big headache burning like fire.
Got heavy black spots under the eyes. Jumped in a plane from Hangzhou to Shenzhen to his wife home.
Broke down the next day:
Rupture of a brain aneurysm.
His wife brought him to the emergency unit of a Shenzhen hospital.
No insurance coverage.
To make the surgery they demanded to put RMB 120,000.00 on the table.
This took the wife some time to arrange.
Her husband was left alone in the hospital floor with a surely still heavily rupture of the aneurysm.
It took somewhat more than 12 hours before they started to conduct the surgery (only after receiving the cash).
Surely this was much too late.
After surgery he was in coma.
After one week we arranged his transfer to Hong Kong, where he was several weeks still in coma & then being transferred to an elderly home.
Now being supported by Hong Kong welfare.
CT scans of his brain are not very positive.
He cannot talk.
We do not know if he recognizes anybody.
He is in a state "trapped in his own body".
Totally depending on nursery.
Here is a link of what the HIPPOCRATIC OATH means:
From Wikipedia click here.
This is the China version excerpt.
And here another story where doctors & nurses did not follow the Hippocratic oath

So in China you need to pay first before they are willing to save your life, as long as you not having a super insurance or are some relative or "princeling" of some heavy-weight officials or other "important person". 
This is totally against the HIPPOCRATIC OATH !
I was long thinking if I should put the photo of my friend here on that blog - maybe some people might consider it "not right" or "unethical" or some kind of problem of breaking some law - I dont care right now about this concerns.
Because it makes me angry to know that if they would have started much earlier with the surgery this man could be much better today !
12 hours with a rupture in a lousy cold Shenzhen hospital floor & the doctors waiting for the cash come down on the table ?
What would this man be maybe much better today if they would have started the surgery immediately after he was admitted by his wife into the emergency unit ?
UPDATE: PHOTO DELETED TODAY
Reminder: Make sure you have a good & solid medical insurance valid also for the MAINLAND CHINA if you are often travelling in China. Carry the card with your insurance number + other details always with you.

Shanghai Proposition

Simply disgusting - please watch - this is the MODERN CHINA:

Uploaded by sav0320 on Mar 13, 2010
Walking on the streets of Shanghai, I met a new friend. Sorry, I did not accept the offer.
** Note ** Some language might be offensive. The whole situation might be offensive!
This video was posted two years ago and removed shortly after.



Please see also this one from CNN - better be careful if you are "messing around" in China:


And then found this one:
China's Sexual Revolution Part 1 + 2 (CBC Documentary)

6000+ Chinese Shoe Factory Workers Strike in Guangdong Province

Here some manufacturing news. Some disputes in a big Guangdong Shoe factory - no further comment from my side - besides this one: Main problem can be "corrupt & bad management". Please see this video: