Laowai Said Bomb Russia

Well, not really.

But you would never know where is the bottom line of Commies. Back then when a Chinese (mainland) fishing boat was detained by the Japanese near the disputed Diaoyu Islands area, the communists government kept their head down. There had been some heated discussions online regarding what to do.

Some argued since historically Diaoyu Islands fell in the authority of Taiwan provincial government before it was taken away by Japan, Taiwan should take care of Chinese fishermen's interest there. And then they came up with a better idea, when Taiwan's navy confront the Japanese navy, it would be a good time for the mainland to attack Taiwan.

You will have to wonder what kind of education of values did these young men go through. Look no further then their elementary textbook, where the story was told about how King Xiang of Song ( -657 B.C.) lost a battle to Kingdom Qi. While King Xiang insisted on follow noble protocol, Chairman Mao mocked him as of moral and value of a stupid pig.

A Protege of a Communist is No Better

Lu Binhua is a specialist at the a hair salon 'Windsor's Love' in Ningbo of Zhejiang Province. Her house in her hometown Hanyang, Hubei Province was bulldozed by local officials against their resistance and without going through legal procedures. Lu announced that she would not serve any officials.

She would ask the question, 'do you work in a government agency' before serving a client. If the answer is yes, she will then ask the client to go to the next specialist. When some of her co-workers argued that not all of persons working in a government agency officials, Lu responded, 'a protégé of an official is no better'.

source via @Daya9.

Twelve Chinese Universities Ranked in ESI Citations

Twelve Chinese Universities were ranked top according to the Essential Science Indicators (ESI).

181 Beijing University, Beijing

219 Qinghua University, Beijing

241 Zhejiang University, Hanghzou

291 University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei

302 Fudan University, Shanghai

307 Shanghai Communications University, Shanghai

325 Nanjing University, Nanjing

418 Sun Yet-sen University, Guangzhou

495 Shangdong University, Jinan

635 Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan

657 Lanzhou University, Lanzhou

774 Beijing Normal University, Beijing

Korean Celebrated Japan's Monster Earthquake

Koreans displayed a banner at the Quade-Final game of the Asian Football Confederation Champions League, when they hosted the Japanese team of Cerezo Osaka. The banner said "Congratulations on Japan's Monster Earthquake!". The banner was written in Japanese.

With that said, the Korean team Jeonbuk Hyndai Moters FC won the game 6:1. The game took place earlier today at the Jeonju World Cup Stadium in Jeonju, South Korea.

No Child Trafficking in Hunan

Today another investigation of the Shao Orphans incident was concluded by the Hunan Communist Party. "No Child Trafficking Operation Was Found", concluded the task force.

Twelve Party members were expelled from the Party, but no fault was found of the government operation.

Not sure when was this round of investigation started, and who was involved. There had been several official investigations launched by the local government after the scandal was broken out by oversea medias. Most recently, the New York Times carried the story on September 18, 2011. All previous investigations concluded no fault committed by any person or government agency.

The newest conclusion followed the suit of previous in denying any wrong doing of the more than dozens provincial government agencies of wrong doings, and insisting that no law had been broken. However, the statement did not answer questions such as why the orphanage documented those children as 'someone left at the front door of the orphanage', rather than 'delivered by the police' as how it took place; also why social agencies fabricated a different set of identification for those children so that they could be marketed as 'orphans'. In a layman's eyes, it's obvious some laws must have been broken by someone, unless it's in an absolute lawless country.

Students Arrested in New York for Cheating SAT

A college student and six high school students were arrested for cheating in SAT. The college student allegedly sat in for high school students at a pre-arranged price in the past year.

A freshman at the University of Michigan, Sam Eshaghoff was arraigned on charges of scheming to defraud, criminal impersonation and falsifying business records. The high school students were charged with misdemeanor.

After teachers at Eshaghoff's alma mater Great Neck North High School of Great Lake heard of rumor that some of their students hired another person to take SAT exam, which was scheduled off campus, they pull out all students' academic record, and compared with SAT scores. The six stood out with the largest discrepancies.

Cheating in the national exam personally guaranteed a death sentence in ancient time, while a fraud committed by the monitor usually lead to elimination of entire family. It was cruel. However, after the Communists took over the power, it went the other direction to the extreme, that defrauding a national exam became part of the local government routines. While officials when pushed to corners by reporters also cited there was no way to punish cheaters, they could learn from this case.

Sex Slave Story Questioned

Days ago a 'sex slave' story shocked the Chinese Internet, when reporter Ji Xuguang called for backup on micro-blog when he was investigating a thread of women jailed underground in Luoyang of Henan Province. Ji managed to smuggle out the city in a car driven by his brother in law, armed with a rusty knife. After he reached a safe place, he told the following story as he heard of:

An enforcement officer in the Luoyang Quality Monitoring Bureau, Li Hao, a Communist Party member, dug a rabbit hole under a residential building, where he lured and jailed six young women for sexual pleasure in a duration as long as two years. One of the sex slaves was able to alert the police when she was brought out on a nightly trip to a sexual client. Police captured Li and rescued four girls. Two girls had been killed on separate incident last year and a few months ago.

An representative of the Party Committee of Luoyang contacted reporter Ji, accusing him of 'leaking national secret'. Ji had to abruptly halted his investigation and fled with help of the online community.

After national media reported the story as told by reporter Ji, Luoyang Party Committee announced a decision to expel Officer Li from the Party.

While the Luoyang Party Committee asked people to move forward, some reporters are curious on which part of the story amounts to 'national secrets'. It is really a horrible case, but horrible cases are committed by individuals at anytime at very corners of the world. What made this case a particular 'national secret'?

Chen Zhengta, lawyer and law professor of the Shenzhen University, summarized some of the questions and posted in online:

1. The rabbit hole is actually a two room suite with bedding, furniture and kitchen, accessed from a tunnel with finished passages completed by stairs, hand rails, lightening, etc. This is unlikely a single person's night work without alerting neighbors in an apartment building. Many of the accommodation seems to be unnecessary for jail room. The building sits next to the local police station, within an apartment complex. How could six adult women live in hole for two years and still presentable (as Li took them out to sex clients)? What about water and sewer? How did he moved furniture into the suite?
2. The suite was equipped with Internet connection. And the girls were given laptops for entertainment. Why didn't they ask for help online?
3. Why didn't the slaves rebel? It's not too difficult to kill one master, with the housing items (cooking knife, computer wires, etc.).
4. The underground project was connected to room purchased by Li two years ago, but the slaves had also been there for 2 years. How fast can Li dig a 'hole' like that?
5. All four girls has been under detainment since they were 'rescued'. Would any of them be allowed to talk?
6. After the exposure of the case, Luoyang police combed through the city for sex trade. Is it an effort to silence potential persons with information?

With the information learned after the exposure of the case, a more convincing plot pointed to an underground prostitution camp run by the city officials, linked to sexual bribery. Li could not have done all of these by himself, and the girls might not be 'slaves', while those involved might be from much higher-up.

'That' might be the 'national secret' the Luoyang Party Committee tried to cover.

Unexpected Accident Hit Shanghai Subway

July 23, on bullet train rear-ended the other, unknown number of passengers perished. While the focus of investigation was the signal system ATP, which gave green light even when there was another train occupying the same segment of rail right ahead, it was revealed that many subway systems, including the Shanghai Subway used the same signal system. The authority attributes the cause of accident to lightning strike, vowed to keep an eye on weather, but refused to examine the signal system. The Central Propaganda Department issued an memo to forbid mentioning the subway signals. One Beijing reporter posted the memo to a micro-blog was suspended.

July 29, a Shanghai subway train traveled to the opposite direction for no reason. The authority blamed on the signal system, but guaranteed that Shanghai's subway carts (might head-on, but) would never rear-end, at the time when people's memory of the bullet train accident was still fresh.

September 26, A Shanghai subway train rear-ended the other around noon, more than 260 injured. The accident duplicated the bullet train accident train to every detail. The ATP signal system failed for unknown reason (no lightning strike underground). The Subway company used manual control, and lost count of trains and their whereabouts.

The official national TV station CCTV did not see it worth a word in its Evening News.

Same signal system was used by the No. 1 and No. 2 lines of Subway in Tehran, Iran. Was that project sponsored by the CIA?

'Irvine 11' Sentenced

Muslim students who disrupted an on campus pro-Israel political speech by shouting questions were found guilty of 'conspiracy to disrupt a public speech' and 'disrupting a public speech'.

All sides cited academic freedom as an argument. The Muslim community see it a right to criticize, the pro-Israel group sees the crackdown valuable to allow an invited speaker deliver a message. The prosecution argued the shouting-down amounts to censorship.

Professor Jarret Lovell of Cal State Fullerton finds the verdict surprising, as he believes the campus of a university should be kept a ground of trail and error.

Foreigners Set Up Container School for Poor Beijing Kids

While the Beijing government is cracking down on low-cost schools in an effort to drive poor people out of the capital city, Compassion for Migrant Children (CMC), a charitable organization combining foreign and local volunteers, set up an after school park, with a name 'the container school', just outside the 5th Highway Ring of Beijing in a village 'Heiqiao (Black Bridge)' for the poor kids free of charge.

Kids from poor families usually don't have anywhere to go after school because their parents were working hard making living. Now they have a place to work on their homework, or safely play.

9th Grader Suicide on Textbook Fees

A middle school student in Chongqing killed herself, after she couldn't pay a CNY 250 ($40) textbook fee. The student is from a poor family. The school is the Shanghe Middle School in Chongqing.

The city of Chongqing, one of four municipals along Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai, was reported to had spent CNY 270 billion ($45 billion) on a campaign to 'Sing Red Songs' in 3 years since Bo Xilai was named the Party Boss. People in Chongqing sing red songs in over 104,000 dedicated events, totaling 80 million headcounts. Everyone must participate, and they sing the red songs (revolutionary fighting songs) to other places, including tours in top theaters in Beijing. As Beijing is the official capital city of the country, Chongqing is often referred to as the 'Red Capital' due to its red song singing campaign.

If only some of the money could be used towards middle school textbook.

One Hundred and One Dalmatians

The plot was familiar, a pretty woman stole a lovely dog, but the story took place in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province.

The dog belongs to Handing Pet Club of Shanghai. The government run Hanghzou TV, under the propaganda department, borrowed it for a pet program. Then the TV station refused to return it. When the pet shop owner, a businessman from Taiwan asked for the dog, he was told the TV station already produced a new set of identification papers for the dog. Now the dog is officially belong to a producer of the program. The owner posted the original contract and all communications in written and oral forms. All proved the program 'borrowed' the dog. The owner filed a complaint to the police, but police refused to take actions, citing the new ID papers.
And this is exactly the same trick played by the Family Planning Agencies in Shaoyang, Hunan Province. They took away children from farm families by force, in name of cracking down violations of family planning policy. Many of the children take away were 'legal' first child. But when they put together proper document, they were told the children were already sold to the US for adoption with another set of ID (to prove they are orphans).
Shao Orphans and Hangzhou dog are all victim of communist government. And they were all made known because of final stage of their journey. Shao Orphans were sold to the US by the government. The dog ended in a young, beautiful woman's house. Shaoyang government claimed not responsible because the children were already in the US. Hangzhou government claimed not responsible as the dog now belong to the producer, not the government propaganda TV.

The woman's name is Ai Jing, born Oct 20, 1987; educated in the Great Britain. Of course the incident caught public attention, thanks to her good looking. Oh well.

Shame of a Nation

Second graders of the Yanshang Elementary School do not have their own classroom. The rented farm barn cost CNY 400 per year. Yanshang Elementary School is in Kunzhai Township of Nayong County in Guizhou Province. Lucky them, the school had been picked by a number of charity organizations, as well as the provincial government as a model site for free lunch. Before, most 274 students could not afford to pack lunch. For many families, a bowl of rice can only be found at dinner table on the New Year's Eve.

A lunch cost CNY 2.3 ($0.40) but it's so much for the kids. Some even took their young siblings to share one dish. Hangzhou Charity Union's free lunch project received CNY 1.12 million donations in a week. A group-buy website sold 30 thousands lunch donations at CNY 2.3 a piece in 2 days. The free lunch project was organized by a local charity 'Love Nayong'. The first meal was made ready on April 14. Premier Wen Jiabao announced in August that the central government would pick up the bill to provide free lunch for poor students across the country.

11 tourists fell into water, two still missing in Chongqing

The title is a faithful duplication of the official Xinhua News: 11 people fell into water after the collision. Nine had been rescued, while 2 were still missing. The spokesperson of the Rail Ministry, Mr. Wang Yongping, said, ".. whether you believe it or not...well, I did."

The accident happened earlier today, near downtown of Chongqing Municipal, the largest city in China (by population), watched by thousands of people in daylight. The dining tour boat capsized and submerged entirely in less than 5 seconds (video).

Look at the first photo, and count how many heads do you see. Perhaps, the official Xinhua News reporter was a crazy mathematician with one finger missing. She counted, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 1, 2, 3, ......

And now you know why Flickr, PBase, etc. were all blocked in China.

Chinese Numbers

Between 1999-2003, the average crime rate of the general population in mainland China is 2.5 per 1000. The number for government employee is 5; for employee of the justice system is 15.

The ratio of family income to housing price: US (1:3), Japan (1:4), Singapore (1:5), Sydney (1:8.5), NYC (1:7.9), China (1:25), Beijing (1:40).

State run enterprises employed 8% of labor, but represent 55% of the wages.

Poverty population reached 250 million, based on the UN guideline of 'blow $1.25 per day'.

The ratio of public officials through Chinese history: Han (200 B.C. - 200 A.D.) 1:7500, Tang (618 - 697) 1:2927, Yuan (1271-1368) 1:2613, Ming (1368-1644) 1:2299, Qing (1644-1912) 1: 911, Communist China (1949- ) 38.

Government operational cost: China 25.6%, India 6.3%, US 3.4%, Japan 2.8%.

Expenses on Education and Health: China 3.8%, India 19.7%, US 21.5%, Japan 23.3%

Whistle Blower's Parents Harassed by Shanxi Police

It started as a traffic dispute, but ended as the confrontation of the Justice System and the people.

In the evening of September 6, near the entrance of a residential community, two young men driving a BMW (with no license plate) and an Audi (plate number Jin O 00888) brutally beaten up a young couple and their 5 years old child on a traffic dispute. The duo taunted witnesses to call 110 (the Chinese system of 911). The story went online 2 days later when it was revealed one of the young men, Li Tianyi, was son of a known singer General Li Shuangjiang. General Li is a singer, but hold the rank equivalent to a three star general. In his modified BMW, there was also an M4A1 carbine and a gate tag for the Chinese Congress.

General Li soon apologized on TV, but his handling of the incident was criticized by the media, because 1) He stationed uniformed troops to the hospital to block media access to the victim. The media questioned whether that is a good use of tax payers' money; 2) Li Tianyi was released after a brief detainment by the police because he was only 15 years old. Public record showed Li was 18 this year; 3) The PLA runs numerous entertaining groups under its propaganda arm. Many of the singers hold ranks equivalent to generals; some hold military ranks. The public questions why PLA has to keep this 'tradition' of guerrilla warfare time.

The entire incident took a sharp turn when the public's attention turned to the other young man, Mr. Su Nan, who was driving an Audi with a licence tag Jin (Shanxi) O (police) 00888. The tag itself is an indication of privilege, and it always reserved to the most powerful officials. Su told the local police that he was son of Mr. Su Hao, Deputy Police Chief of Shanxi Province and Police Chief of Taiyuan (the capital city of Shanxi). When it's clear the incident has grown to a national event, Shanxi Police issued a press release that Mr. Su Hao has nothing to do with Mr. Su Nan. Mysteriously, the released was withdrawn only hours later.

Beijing based reporter Li Jianjun found Su Nan was a natural son of Su Hao. These created a serious issue for Mr. Su Hao, because according to the Family Planning Act, public officials could not have second child. By the Act, Mr. Su would be fired.

Mr. Su threatened Li that he would hire Professor Wang Jijun, the Dean of Shanxi University Law School, to file a lawsuit. Wang has a track record of heavy hand prosecution. He was named a 'Heavy Hand Hero' by the Shanxi Government in 1985. Li welcomes the move to settle the case in the court, and refused to bow down.

On September 13, a group of gangsters attacked Li's parents' house in Pingyao County of Jinzhong Prefecture of Shanxi Province. The gangsters broke into the house by force and threatened Li's wife, child and parents. After Li's family called police, Shanxi Police detained Li's father and brother.

Reporter Li's phone was tapped by police, before he realized. He called two persons, one is a manger in his previous employer, a news agency in Shanxi, the other is a contact with information of Su's unlawful involvement in controlling local coal mines. Both were harassed by police immediately after the phone conversation.

You would not see it as a nation-wide coordinated operation, while Sina (SINA @NASDAQ) and Tencent (700 @HKG), the two largest Internet providers in China, removed Li's accounts, and wiped all of his blogs and tweets at the same time. It is a sign that the order must have been handed down from much higher levels than provincial police.

A forgotten accident

64 people lost their lives when a ferry sunk near a sand filed in Shaoyang, Hunan Province on September 9, 2011. The same area where children were taken away by government agencies to be sold to adoptive families for profit.

The ferry was certified to a capacity of 30, but carried more than 100 passengers, mostly local middle school students going home on the Moon Festival vacation.

Official Xinhua News reported the death toll as 8, later revised to 11. Numerous sources and photos from the scene showed bodies of dozens, and a body count of 64. Nobody knows how many were on the boat, so 64 is only a lower bound.

Unlike the bullet train accident, the ferry tragedy did not raise much attention online. It was already forgotten two days later.

Gridlock in Beijing Tonight

It has been gridlock in Beijing tonight, because it's time again to bribe the government officials. The Moon Festival (Mid-Autumn Festival) give people a good excuse to visit government officials to pass the season's greetings...with bags of cash, etc. The otherwise traditional festival is on August 15 of the lunar calendar. It fell on September 12 this year.

Imagine that! The entire capital city would be sitting on stand still traffic for 5 days, all because of all the government officials busy taking bribe at the same time.

South Korea Online Censorship

Professor K.S. Park was one of three members appointed by the opposition party of South Korea to the national Internet Censoring body Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC). An anti-censorship and free speech advocate, Park opposes most of the decisions made by the commission, a nine members body controlled by the ruling party. This week, Professor Park found his own blog on the roll of secret removal list to be considered by his own commission. KCSC cleans up the Internet on the South Korean government's like at the pace of removing close to 10,000 URLs a month. Park, using his blog, discusses legal implications and social impact of some removed contents he deems valuable.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation released a public letter to the KCSC expressing its concern, and pointed out 'no healthy democracy is possible where free speech is not tolerated'.

People of South Korea should count their blessing that, in the least, there are someone who argues for their online rights to accessing 'valuable expressive historical, political and artistic' contents. On the contrary, in China, domestic Internet contents providers were all aligned themselves with the government, with no exception at all. Even foreign companies such as Yahoo and Cisco, who do not operate within China's borders, thus not subject to Chinese laws, volunteered to work with the government, in many cases, at the life cost of their customers.

High-tech companies have an genuine interest in free flow of knowledge and information. With the talent as large as the Chinese, Chinese high-tech companies lagged behind their western counterparts at least a decade or more, a remarkable phenomena.

Similarly, in China, the farmers suffered the most under the national policy leaning towards cities. However, they were the group that seemed to be never complaining. Human rights activists are by and large comprised of intelligentsia, elites and political/economical privileged in the city. So they see the pain of farmers, and hate to see it, but it's not something they must loose their sleep over. This partially explains the overwhelming anti-government sentiment online, but overwhelming stability in real life in China.

Should we say, real victims never complains? This observation send an interesting to the regime, and and repressive regimes: do them harder!

I Want Go To School!

"I want Go To School" was an official slogan of the 'Project Hope'. For over 20 years, schools were set up, and many children poor sponsored to go to school on private donations. If you are confused how come the No. 2 economic body in the world must rely on private donations for public education, you have to understand how the government income were allocated. Education and Health combined took less than 4% of the GDP. As a matter of fact, that's a clear violation to the education act passed many years ago, which mandates a 4% expenses on education. Even though China appeared a mighty military monster in neighbor's eyes, as a matter of fact, more money are spent in domestic suppression of human rights activists than on national defense. The bulk chuck of money goes to officials' cars, oversea trips and banquets.

A months ago, just days before the begin of the new semester, China's cities are driving migrant workers' children out of city limit in an coordinate op. In Beijing alone, 35 schools for low income migrant workers' children were shutdown and more than 14,000 children lost school. Reporters dug out an interview with Mr. Liu Limin, then Beijing Municipal Education Chief, now Deputy Minister of Education Department, who said in front of camera that people should not pay too much attention to low income children's need for school.

It is already a disgrace that the government not willing to spent a dime on citizen's education, but set up an official to collect private donations to build elementary schools. Amazingly, the government somehow deemed the education system in China was good enough, that they decided to use that money collected through 'Project Hope' to build schools in Africa. Believe it or not, most African countries had far better school system built than those in China. Google, Wikipedia and any data point to that. Perhaps building schools in Africa makes the communist regime look better, as the ruling class saw it. But, as people from Taiwan who questioned, how can we trust a government who does not treat its own citizen well, even when they try hard to kiss our ass?

A school age child was kneeing outside of a public school in Nanjing, capital city of Jiangsu Province. He wanted to go to school like other kids. He used to go to a school set up by private organizations that attend to low income migrant workers. That school does not require a residency ID, does not charge high fees, reuse or let students share textbooks and stationaries. Now all those private schools were shut down. When probed by reporters, the government officials said they would allow these children go to public school if they satisfy 5 conditions, which were hoops and loops that had 'mission impossible' written all over them. Two weeks later, in Beijing, only a hand of children were able to collect all required documents, but when they gathered at the Education Bureau, they were told to walk away.

September 1 was the first day of school in China.