Dongguan Hold On

Dongguan is a prefecture-level city in Guangdong Province with a population of 8 million. The city situates itself between Guangzhou and Shenzhen. For decades, it had been known as the 'manufacturing capital' of the world. Recently, it is also dabbed as the 'sex capital' of China.

For whatever reason, the CCTV under the Central Propaganda Ministry named Dongguan in it's national news broadcasting, accusing it of harboring prostitution activities, a criminal offense in China. It came as a sudden earthquake. Over six thousands police combed the city, and 67 prostitutes and their clients were arrested in one night. It's an inconvenience and understandably disappointing for those who rely on the service. But the reaction from the public was interesting, to say the least. According to online data research, more than 80% of online comments support the illegal business. Shy of mentioned the word prostitution per se, online media and even some publication use banners with bold fonts to show support 'Dongguan Hold On', 'Dongguan Be Strong'. Data analytics studies suggested that the great majority of males posters mocked and taunted the CCTV and the police, while women who as a whole did not approve prostitution activities kept silence.

An off duty police officer was seen holding a sign on the street in Hong Kong to protest for a colleague who was arrested on a sex trip in Dongguan. Local residents also displayed banners with the phrase, 'our soul is not for sale', with an undertone of mocking the reporters of CCTV.

What made Chinese, known for being introverted otherwise, to publicly spoke up for such an embarrassing act?

In an unrelated incident hundreds miles away in Guan'an, Sichuan Province on the same day, a police officer confiscated a scale from a peddler who was selling vegetables without a permit. The officer then threw the scale down a ditch. It appears the peddler was not beaten or mistreated. Still passerby were engaged, and soon a brawl was ensued. Thousands of people who had no ties to the peddler surrounded the police force, and demanded an apology.

It's no secret that any public defiant to the communists party rule will predictably gain a standing ovation from the audiences, anytime, any where. In many cases, it doesn't matter which side was at fault. Bashing the government has been a fashion for intellectuals and often a marketing technique for businessmen.

Since assuming the power in 2012, the Xi/Li administration has arrested and jailed more dissidents than twelve years of Hu/Wen administration combined. But obviously, people did not blink.

Shouldn't 'they' be scared?

Wang Qinglei Fired

A star journalist was terminated by the China Central Television (CCTV). Wang qinglei revealed in his Weibo that he had been fired by the CCTV after he questioned the practice of the national TV to have an American Chinese political activist confess in front of the camera for his alleged crimes before a court trial.

Wang was briefly suspended in 2011 for raising inappropriate questions while reporting the bullet train accident in Wenzhou. In his ten years tenure at CCTV, Wang worked as a reporter with the Weekly News, News 1+1, and as the producer with the 24 Hours and lately Face to Face.

Charles Biqun 'Manzi' Xue was caught by police for inviting two prostitutes to his rental apartment in Beijing. While being detained by the police, a tearing and running noses Xue appeared on the Xinwen Lianbo, the one and only official national daily half hour news broadcasting, and confessed his adultery for 3 minutes. Appearance at the Xinwen Lianbo with air time of this length is usually reserved for major historic domestic event. Xue's wife was also publicly humiliated by exposing crime committed by her ex-mother-in-law. In addition, Xue confessed a scheme to use the Internet social networking sites to criticize the government and induce pain to Chinese people.

Berkeley educated Xue is a venture capitalist working with startups in China. An avid poster on Weibo, Xue saw opportunities to gain reputation from his potential clients among the newly emerging middle class by commenting on social issues. Xue had been cautious to steer clear from sensitive political topics, but obviously he misjudged the tolerance threshold of the Beijing authority.

In a long resignation letter, Wang revealed that there was no legal basis to charge Xue even after he was made confess on CCTV. Five days later, the National Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate jointly published an ordinance, in which it made an 'inaccurate' post on the Internet a criminal offense after being viewing 5,000 times or being forwarded 500 times.

The reaction on the Chinese online community is overwhelmingly supportive. However, there are also people who point out that Wang wouldn't be able to stay inside for ten years long and elevate to a new producer at the CCTV had he been as honest as he claimed in the letter.

Starbucks' Trouble Might Have Been Planted One Year Ago

In the past few days, Starbucks have been under heavy bombardment from the propaganda branch CCTV. The official national television station blamed Starbucks for charging higher price in China. The TV program claimed that Starbucks charge a high price of $4.5 for a cup of Latte while the cost of coffee and milk was only $0.80.

Starbucks quickly responded that the material cost only contributed 18% of the price, and that there were other cost involved. In particular, Starbuck said, customers in China used to stay in the coffee shop longer than those in the west, thus increased expenses in store lease.

Customers in China reacted overwhelmingly in favor of Starbuck. The next day, many Starbucks stores find long line of customers waiting for a cup of coffee, partially in support of the coffee store, partially as a public defiance to the Propaganda mouthpiece.

Professor Wang Ye of University of Pittsburgh at Bradford suggested that Starbucks' trouble might had been planted when their CEO Howard Schultz visited China in April 2012. It was believed former Chinese President Jiang's influences were severely diminished at the once-a-decade power transition in March. Jiang's successor Hu Jintao announced that he would withdraw from decision-making entirely to pass the power to new President Xi Jinping. It was viewed as a public humiliation to Jiang's effort to stay in power even after he stepped down from the top position in China in 2003.

Jiang reacted with a news of his meeting with the visiting Schultz to reassure his base that he was still around. The Starbucks was accidentally caught in a crossfire between Jiang and Xi, who understandably would have wished that Jiang had gone away forever and for real.

As professor Wang pointed out, unfortunately, Starbucks stood on the wrong side.

In the meanwhile, Xi Jinping praised Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola for their contributions to Chinese economy.

Biggest 2013

• Biggest Surprise: Shutdown of Google Reader. The annotation being that how can we trust 'the cloud' in preserving user contents. Google also killed its own RSS reader extension for the Chrome browser. With power of Google, not only it can afford to discontinue a popular product (of its own), but also it can kill a widely use protocol.
• Biggest Collapse: Zheng Yunjie, a long time 'independent voice of China', published 'pre-written soft advertisement' disguised as his own opinion.
• Biggest Hoax: Chinese People Asks Government to Lower Housing Price. On the contrary, Chinese people are happy with the high housing price. With a average income one tenth of the US, China's housing price is ten times of the US per square feet. However, 1) the house ownership in China is close to 90%, while the figure in the US is less than 70%; 2) In China, most property owners have already paid off all mortgage. It is estimated that there are over 10 million empty houses in China while many newly developed communities dubbed as 'ghost town'. The driven force for ever rising housing price is investment. It will be easy to fix to bring the housing price to its true value: property tax. But neither the government nor the people wants that, especially the people. As a matter of fact, few Chinese would need to buy a house in a foreseeable future. At this time, many families have more than 1 house. With the Family Planning policy in place, each young family will inherit two houses from each's parents, so on so forth. A high housing price make everything wealthier, so why not?

Moral Heroes

The yearly 'Spring Festival Party', a TV show produced by the Central China Television (CCTV), the official national TV station has been the highlight of the traditional holiday for 30 years. It is the most expected, most watched, and more recently, the most criticized show in China. For a young actor, a 5 second appearance in the TV party equates a recognition of national fame and status, which usually translate a 10x appraisal of ticket value everywhere else. On the other side, for an established actor, an unexplained absence from the party will often result in plunged income in the years to come. As a matter of fact, the show is the only TV program that all Chinese, regardless of their social status, have to watch on the New Year's eve, even those who openly hate it.

Understandable, any word or gestures in the show must have been carefully scrutinized by the Central Propaganda Department in the long six months of its production. The Party never missed the opportunity to pass on important message through the show.

This year, ten officially recognized 'National Moral Heroes' were praised on the show. They are small people who had done extraordinary deeds to the society. However, among them, two were questioned by the online community.

• Dr. Liu Yulian made the list for her dedication to patients, mostly poor villagers; but also for her sacrifice. She left her 11 months old daughter, who was sick at the time, bounded at home so that she could go out to treat her patients. The death of the girl did not stop Dr. Liu one night to do the same to her second baby girl, who cheated the death with a 104 fever when she walked out of door with the girl bounded at home.

• Mr. Hu Wenchuan made the list for saving the lives of 4 children drowning in water, while the fifth being his own son.

There is an old Chinese saying, Care for elders like caring for your own parents, and care for youth as caring for our own children. Obviously, Dr. Liu and Mr. Hu had acted above and beyond the tradition value. However, many audiences question what made them do that.

It will be easier to understand if we follow communism ideologies. There is no property, no self, no family, no value, no moral, but only the great movement to liberate the human being led by the Party.

CCTV On Fire, Captured on Tape

In incredible home video captured the entire process when the under-construction new CCTV building was torched by holiday fireworks shot by, CCTV.


Around 50 seconds into the video, a male's voice was heard questioning whether the building had just caught fire. Then a short discussion ensued as bystanders went back and forth on whether the building was actually on fire. A female voice commented that a fireball from the fireworks fell on the roof of the building before it exploded. Around 1:20, they were heard all agreed that the building was indeed on fire, and someone suggested to dial 119 (fire alarm).

Surprisingly, the mood among Chinese netizens were cheering or ridiculing when initial report said there was no causality. Some thought the CCTV complex was plain ugly, while others were not happy on the government propaganda agency in general.

As expected, the CCTV did not report the fire of its own building, a stone's throw away from its studio building while waiting for the official instructions from the CCP. When curious Beijing residents turned on their TV last night after the fire broke out, they were amazed to find endless nonstop coverage of the fire in Australia. Han Han blogged (and was promptly removed by CCP Net cops):

央视大火有感
from 韩寒 by 韩寒

1：不幸中的万幸，听说大楼在装修阶段，希望不要有人员伤亡。

2：最重要的也是容易纠缠的一个问题是，这个烟花究竟是老百姓放的，还是央视元宵晚会之后自己放的，相关部门一定要给一个公正的答案。不搪塞，不推卸，不栽赃。

3：烟花爆竹的燃放一定要注意安全。

4：此楼一直被说是央视裤衩下的鸡鸡，现在央视自己把鸡鸡给烧了，这样的自宫行为，彻底的符合了央视身为全球第一大太监媒体的形象。的确，央视暂时还不配有鸡鸡。

5：第一时间，我打开电视，看中央电视台的新闻，央视很镇定，情绪很稳定，在不停的播放澳大利亚的火灾。

6：如果央视的新闻联播在那时候开始，主持人播报完情况，镜头可以直接摇向窗外再摇回来，成为史上第一个无剪切新闻。

7：我告诉我朋友，看网站上的新闻，火灾了。朋友打开一看说胡说，根本没有新闻。

8：我一看，果然都没了，原来是圣旨到——“各网，中央电视台新大楼北配楼发生火灾相关报道，请各网站只用新华社通稿，不发图片，视频，不做深度报道，只放国内新闻区，关闭跟帖，自然滚动，博客论坛不置顶，不推荐。

9：我们就是这样大事化小，小事化无。财产损失就损失吧，反正纳税人的钱不是烧了就是吃了，横竖总是个浪费，只是希望元宵佳节，楼里的施工人员，消防人员可以平安回家。尤其是消防员，每次在火灾或者车祸现场看见他们，觉得他们还是非常可敬的。

10：至于央视，真是没有想到，一个永远在讲真话的媒体，居然会遭受这个创伤，上天无眼。

A detailed coverage via Zhou Shuguang's Blog.

Communisim Who?

Two parts of Obama's Inauguration Address were crossed out in the official Xinhua News Agency Chinese transcript:

1. Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tans, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. Then understood that our power alone cannot protest us, ......

2. ......, — know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

The broadcasting of the ceremony by CCTV was abruptly cut when Obama mentioned the word 'communism'. The video clip could be viewed at Youtube.