Happy Chinese New Year!

The Chinese, being descendants of Pangu or some other ‘deity’ do their calendar a little different from the barbarians or rest of the world, so now is their new year. Today is the first day and Beijing sounds like a war zone with all the fireworks and such. It is a great holiday actually and most of the Chinese are pretty happy now .

Mencius and the Mandate of Heaven in China

From here: Mencius promoted the concept of the Mandate of Heaven, (the original idea actually dates to the much earlier period of the Zhou Dynasty) meaning that if the ruler did not perform properly, the people would be morally right in seeking his removal, even through violent means. ==========

China’s Ecological Problems Worsening

china daily excerpt: “BEIJING – A three-month drought across most parts of northern China, the country’s main wheat-growing region, is likely to continue during the Spring Festival, forecasters warn.China Meteorological Administration spokesman Chen Zhenlin, said on Monday that no rain or snow is expected in most northern areas in the coming week and mild snow, in parts, is forecast only after Feb 7.”

Beijing Still Has No Snow, Breaking a Record- China’s Ecology is Dying

Beijing has had no snow this year! This is the first time it has happened in recorded history. The northern part of China is undergoing a severe drought which is leaving many to live like the damned. But dont worry, with all of the cash uncle c and his crew have siphoned off the money trough, they can afford to go to places like Australia, England, Canada and the USA… chinadialy Residents in Hanyu village, in Shandong province’s Zaozhuang city, wait for drinking water on Sunday ahead of the Spring Festival, which falls on Feb 3 this year. Zaozhuang has seen no effective rain since September, causing severe water shortages. [Photo/China Daily] BEIJING – Sunday was the capital city’s 84th snow-free day this winter, making it the longest winter period without snow in Beijing since records began 60 years ago. And there is no sign of snow falling in Beijing in the next 10 days, which means the city is unlikely to enjoy a “white” Chinese New Year, which falls on Feb 3, according to local meteorologists.

Confusion in China – Bribery Good or Bad?

This snippet is confusing. It says that bribery is the main reason for Chinese billionaires to be imprisoned. Is this a typo, did they mean to say that “Bribery is the main reason China Has billionaires” ? After all, 80% of all Chinese billionaires are either kids or family of Chinese communist party members who built their power base upon their sparkling virtue and ability to keep their words and not lie right???? excerpt: chinadialy” Bribery is the main reason for imprisoning China’s billionaires, according to a newly released Hurun report, China Youth News reported Wednesday. Fraud and misappropriation of the capital markets are the other main reasons the wealthy go to jail.” According to the report, 24 of 1,882 business tycoons in China are either in jail or waiting sentencing for being involved with such problems in the past 12 years.

Yawn…Chinese Insurace Companies Accused of Fraud, So What Else is New?

File this under “Check your portfolio for Chinese stocks” chinadaily “BEIJING – China’s national auditor has revealed that two of the country’s largest insurers committed financial misconduct involving more than 3 billion yuan ($455 million) in 2009. The revelations were contained in two reports published by the National Audit Office (NAO) on Monday.”

China Censoring Egypt and Why

On China censoring the Egypt story from here: excerpt:”The filtering of search result and the blocking of search term “Egypt” in social media websites is to prevent certain interpretation of the political situation in Egypt. The scenes of Tanks moving into the city center, the confrontation between the people and the soldiers are very likely to recall Chinese people’s memory of the June 4 incident back in 1989 and the criticism of the authoritarian government in Egypt can easily turn into a political allegory in China. The propaganda department certainly has to issue censorship alert to web-portal and social media websites, where opinions can spread rapidly and become mainstream public discourses in a few hour time. Nevertheless, micro-bloggers still find their way to get around censorship and bridge the news. Many bloggers keep updating the political situation in Egypt by translating and transcribing the Al Jazeera TV news reports and other overseas media outlets. Wang Xiaoshan

China Touts New Secret Bomber, Or Did They Just Hack a Scene from Top Gun- Who Else But China Would Do This?

Here is a great story from yahoo. Apparently the Chinese ran a story about their great military capabilities and showed some “footage” of one of “their planes in action”. The “footage” was actually hacked fight scenes from the movie Top Gun. So here are my questions 1-why hack fighter scenes from a movie that is 25 years old, don’t the Chinese have enough pride to hack something more recent 2-is this the same military that all of you are fearing? 3-why is this not surprising 4-dont the Chinese have pride?  Oh yeah, and here is some background to help you understand China.  China has a one party system, like a dictatorship and controls the media. So when CCTV airs something, it has the blessing of the communist party. So, when this ‘fake’ footage was taken, it had the party blessing. What this means is that what they have done would be like barak o and his military leaders standing in front of some cheesy chinese martial arts film and claiming that it is true footage of some top secret US military forces in action…. yeah, its that bad. Story from Yahoo ” On Jan. 23, China’s state broadcaster, CCTV, ran a story about an air force training exercise that contained some suspicious footage. Around the segment’s one minute 12 seconds mark (see above), as the China-U.S.-oriented blog Ministry of Tofu pointed out, “the way a target was hit by the air-to-air missile fired by a J-10 fighter aircraft and exploded looks almost identical to a cinema scene from the Hollywood film Top Gun.” Viewers were led to believe that what they were seeing was a live fire exercise. But according to Ministry of Tofu: “A net user who went by the name “刘毅” (Liu Yi) pointed out that the jet that the J-10 ‘hit’ is an F-5, a US fighter jet. In Top Gun, what the leading actor Tom Cruise pilots an F-14 to bring down is exactly an F-5. Looking at the screenshots juxtaposition, one cannot fail to find that even flame, smoke and the way the splinters fly look the same.” Not convinced? The Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report put the videos side-by-side. (see the video here) The seemingly doctored footage has been removed from CCTV’s website. But Real Time China Report notes that Chinese media has in the past been caught red-handed lifting fictional U.S. material in news reports. “In 2002, the popular Beijing Evening News tabloid translated and published as genuine a satirical news article by The Onion about U.S. Congress threatening to leave Washington D.C. unless the city built them a new building with a retractable roof,” writes Josh Chin. “Five years later, the state-run Xinhua news agency infamously used an x-ray image of Homer Simpson’s head to illustrate a story about the discovery of a genetic link to multiple sclerosis.” CCTV has declined to comment in media reports.

Grow Up Chinese ‘Adults’

According to the Chinese Civil Affairs Ministry (which I find a comical name especially for China) 3 in 10 adult Chinese remain partly or totally financially dependent on their parents.

Chinese Dungeon Master Gets the Needle- Uncle C Don’t Play That

from the Chinadaily “BEIJING – A man was sentenced to death for kidnapping and caging two girls in a dungeon and raping nine other women, said a verdict of the Intermediate People’s Court of Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei province, on Sunday. Zeng Qiangbao, a 40-year-old worker in a steel factory in Wuhan, was convicted of rape, illegally imprisoning, robbery and forcible seizure, according to the verdict. The court heard that Zeng had caged two teenage girls in a dungeon for 590 days and 317 days as sex slaves until they were rescued by police on May 14 last year. He also raped another nine women from July 2007 to May 2010, the prosecutor said.”