Gu tried in Anhui

The official Xinhua News reported that the Neil Heywood murder case had been started in Hefei, Anhui. British citizen Neil Heywood was alleged to be poisoned by Bo-Gu Kailai, wife of CCP's Politburo member and Charisma Party Chief in Chongqing, Bo Xilai. It is believed to be the largest political scandal in decades. It is rumored Shen Zhijing (Beijing) will join the legal defense team of Bo-Gu Kailai, along with Jiang Min (Anhui). Shen defended former Deputy Minister of the Public Security Ministry Li Jizhou. Jiang, being the deputy president of national association of attorneys, is not a trial lawyer.

Although it is understandable to have the case tried in a neutral third place, away from Bo's Chongqing, Anhui is still an interesting pick being one of the most poor areas lagging behind the nation. Why?

The answer is that Anhui is the hometown and power base of Chief Justice Wang Shengjun. Born 1946 in Suxian, Anhui, Wang attended Hefei Normal College in 1966, majoring in History. Due to the start of the Great Cultural Revolution in early 1966, Wang did not have much formal college education. Wang never took a course in legal related areas, and never worked a single day at a court. Still Wang was named the (ninth) Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of People in 2008.

One month after resumed the Chief Justice position, Wang published a sentencing rule on death penalty, where are: 1) law; 2) security status; 3) social feelings. The three point guidance make many law experts puzzled.

Anhui Province is an interesting place. In a sense it is the miniature of China. A small province known for its poverty, Anhui has contributed to numerous famous people in Chinese history. Many scientists, businessmen, political strongmen come from Anhui in thousands of years, probably more than any other place in China. Yet, Anhui itself remained one of the most poor area with the most corrupt political systems.

In Rain, Beijing Government Compared to Japanese Occupation

Several days after a sudden thunder storm in Beijing, human casualty number remains a national secret. The deputy major of Beijing said the government would release the number 'at a proper time'.

Chinese people are comparing the handling of heavy rain by the communist government of Beijing to that by the Japanese occupation authority in 1939 in Tianjin, a neighboring port city 80 miles east on the coast of Bohai Bay.

Tianjin was the second largest city in China, and the manufacture, economic and financial center of the North. At the time, two years after the city fell to Japanese invasion, large part of the city was still under control of the western concessions, which were surrounded and blocked by Japanese army. When a historic flood attacked the city, the Japanese army worked with western authorities in the rescue effort. Commander General Masaharu Homma set up a commission with representatives from China, Japan, Great Britain and France. General Homma deployed IJA 27th Division to battled the flood. In addition, he ordered all hospitals to open to public without charge, all boats were expropriated for rescue mission. Gross root organizations were encouraged to help. A detailed report was released 7 days after the water receded.

On the night of July 21, 2012, unknown number of Beijing residents perished at their homes and in their cars. Mr. Ding Zhijian was driving home when his car was stuck in water under Guangqumen Overpass. Mr. Ding called his wife at 7:40pm, and ask her to get help because he couldn't reach the police hotline. In the next 20 minutes, with the last call registered at around 8:00pm, he would call his wife several more times because he couldn't open the door. Mr. Ding even broke his skull when trying to break the window. Mrs. Ding set out from their house at Ganluyuan, which is 5 miles to the east, rushed to the scene at around 8:30pm. She was stopped in traffic, and ran half of the course on foot, with a hammer she took from home to break the door window. Mr. Ding's co-works and colleagues from partner company also arrived.

At the time, police, fire fighters and military police were already lined up. Not surprisingly, because this was at the very center of Beijing only minutes from the Tiananmen Square, and it was a section of main road, the 2nd ring beltway. Beijing has a six ring beltway road system. However, despite Mr. Ding's repeatedly begging, officers and soldiers refused to do anything. They even refused to take a look. Some officers told Mr. Ding's wife, they would wait for senior officers and the TV station. Two hours later, after senior officers and TV crew arrived, they started the rescue and pulled Mr. Ding's car out. The video footage was aired as a propaganda message of how senior officials and military fight the flood.

Mr. Ding left behind his wife and a 3 years old daughter. At the funeral, it was overhead that Mrs. Ding was telling her daughter, father had become a star in the sky to look after you. The little girl then asked, 'with so many stars, how do I tell which one is Daddy?'

Ding might not have died if it were not his wife's complaint for his being late for home. On that day in the afternoon, Ding received a phone call from his boss for a business getting together with a partner company after work. Mrs. Ding was not happy and asked him not to go. Ding promised he would come home for dinner. When the meeting ended around 7:30pm, Ding insisted going home although a dinner had been arranged by the partner. 10 minutes later, when Ding reached Guangqumen overpass, there was already water on the road, but Ding decided to rush through, and failed.

It's impossible to imagine Mr. Ding's desperation when trying to break out from the black Hyundai Tucson. Mr. Ding told his wife he couldn't open the door because of the pressure from water. Some people also suggested the all electronic door locks might also have failed if the battery was short circuited by the water. If that was the case, then there was no way to open the door from inside.

While some people suggested going to the trunk for the lug wrench (to break the Window). This may not be easy either, on a company SUV. The opening of the spare tire compartment is towards the rear. The handler is hard to reach from front without part of your body blocking the the cover board from opening up.

It sounds surreal, but the story was first released by Mr. Ding's co-workers on Weibo, then confirmed by a newspaper investigative report.

Beijing Police Chief Fu Zhenghua quickly responded to criticism online. Mr. Fu told reporters anyone who criticizes the government or senior officials on the Internet would face severe punishment. Mr. Fu revealed that 5,007 individuals had been apprehended for improper postings online, 366 thousand posts had been deleted as of July 24. Fu announced the crackdown on online speech will carry on until August 31st.

Newspaper were ordered not to write about the rain. Southern Weekends was ordered to remove all 8 pages of coverage of flood coverage.

Female Korean Judge Blocked Sumsung Pad

A federal judge banned Korean manufacture Samsung's Galaxy Pad from selling in the US, citing a patent dispute. A same claim made by Apple in the UK was thrown out by the court. Further, Apple was ordered to place a statement on its website to clarify that Samsung did not infringe upon its IP. Last month, an American federal court judge dismissed Apple's IP claim case

Korean American Judge Lucy H. Koh became a federal judge for the Northern District of California in 2010.

More than often, with few exception, Asian descendants go beyond reasonable to prove their determination to separate their past.

College Students Love the Party

Jinghua Times reported over 80% of college students are willing to become a member of the Communists Party.

Based on a survey conducted in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Heilongjiang, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Shangdong, Henan, Guangdong, Sichuan, Yunnan, Shaanxi, Dingxia and Xinjiang, 80% of college students expressed willingness to join the Party, tied with results of recent years.

Drawing the most bright and brilliant youth into the Party might not be a good sign for the country, though. While it's understandable that young graduates have a right to pursue social status and economic gains as party members, it would be consequential that these group would level whatever available to maintain their privileged lives, at a cost of the entire society's well being.

On the other hand, the Party has been increasingly relying on offspring of its own, or 'princelings', as only people it trusts, the disgruntle among people without a 'red-blood' heritage could unstable the regime's control on an already volatile situation.

What's Wrong with the Pictures

Posted by Pretending to be in NYC, and re-tweeted by Han Han:

China is capable of sending a woman to the space, while equally capable of killing a woman's 7 months baby. The striking contrast between the fate of two women: 33 years old PLA Major Liu Yang and 22 years old village girl Feng Jianmei best illustrated the reality of a torn country - glory dreams shining over hopeless shame, while top notch technologies accompanies the most immoral trumping of human beings.

22 years old Feng Jianmen lost her baby because she couldn't afford the 40,000 CNY bribery that family planning agency had demanded. It is also a rare case that wrongdoings of local officials had been acknowledged by Shannxi provincial level government, after the desperate picture of a mother lying with her dead baby went viral online.

The admission proved the One Child Per Family police was more a revenue concern than anything else for the government, especially at a time when labor is in severe shortage and the overall population has been dropping for many years.

Any comparison between the communist ruling and Hitler is an insult to the Nazis. While the Nazi Party impose sufferings on millions of people at many corners of the world, the communists had turned on to no one but their own people. By numbers: China lost 30 million population as the result of the Japanese invasion during the WWII, with about 3 million soldiers killed in action. After the end of civil war and after the set up of the communist regime, over 5 million civilians were slaughtered in 'political campaigns' and over 40 million starved to death from 1959-1962 alone.

Asian Americans Called on SCOUS to End Discrimination in College Admission

It was filed on behalf of the 80-20 National Asian-American Educational Foundation, the National Federation of Indian American Associations, the Indian American Forum for Political Education, the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law. (The latter group focuses on discrimination against Jewish Americans, and the brief argues that today's admissions policies have the same impact on Asian-American applicants as previous generations' policies had on Jewish applicants.)

The brief focuses heavily on research studies such as the work that produced the 2009 book, No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life (Princeton University Press), which argued that -- when controlling for various factors -- one could find the relative "advantage" in admissions of members of different ethnic and racial groups.

The book suggested that private institutions essentially admit black students with SAT scores 310 points below those of comparable white students. And the book argued that Asian-American applicants need SAT scores 140 points higher than those of white students to stand the same chances of admission. The brief also quotes from accounts of guidance counselors and others (including this account in Inside Higher Ed) talking about widely held beliefs in high schools with many Asian-American students that they must have higher academic credentials than all others to gain admission to elite institutions.

via Inside Higher Ed

Burning Electric Car Engulfed Three Lives On Board

It is not uncommon to see Communist China government cover up any accidents, regardless of where the fault laid on. However, even veteran reporters were surprised by the swift ban on reporting of a multi-car accident in Shenzhen of Guangdong Province. Within an hour of the accident, traffic cops were deleting reporters photos, and news outlets were issued a gag order.

There was not much debate over the cause of the accident on May 26. A drunk and speeding Nissan GTR hit two cars. The driver and three passengers on the GTR suffered no injuries. Police issued photos of the driver with a single band-aid on his forehead, presumably from the airbag release, but the band-aid was absent a few hours later. Three passengers were not hurt at all. However, the driver of a taxi hit by the GRT was killed when his BYD E6 was engulfed in flames, along with two passengers. The GTR hit another car before it stopped on the road. There is no casualty on the third car.

A question is raised regarding safety of BYD's electric car. The local government deployed 300 E6 model electric cars as taxis as a showcase for Shenzhen's technology capacity.

BYD, a battery maker, was known to the world as the rising star in making electric vehicles from scratch. Although the advocate from central government seems to come to a halt since last year, the manufacture rallied enough support in the local government. The industry has long been curious on BYD's success in overcoming two major obstacles in developing full electric vehicles: cost of battery and fire safety. Some speculation points that BYD did not solve the cost issue of low producing ratio of batteries. Instead, BYD relied on mass labor to comb through batteries to pick out good ones. The incident may be seen as a major blow to BYD's claim of battery safety, especially under abuse, such as in a moderate collision.

Last May, Media reported BYD dismissed over 1000 employees and cut off a retail network for mini-cars. November, the Ministry of Land and Resources of China canceled a BYD project in Shannxi Province. Fourteen officials of local and provincial levels were disciplined.

Warren Buffett famously invested in BYD, a booster for believers in BYD and electric vehicles alike. For readers interested in studying Chinese entrepreneurship, BYD provide a typical trace of a rising course. The company started as a battery maker in 1995. Echoing the government's call for new energy cars, BYD secured government support after it announced it had grasped key technology in electric vehicle manufacturing. However, only several hundred electric cars had been delivered since the inception of an auto division in 2003. Instead, the company become one of the largest traditional car makers, taking advantage government policies tailored for electric car makers. The company then getting into fields of solar energy, also in response to government police steering. Most recently, the company added mobile communication into its profile.

BYD claimed that because the accident was so sever, ordinary gasoline car would also have failed to protect its occupants in similar condition. BYD's stock price bounced back Monday after initial setback.

Shenzhen is one of six 'New Energy Cars Test Cities' designated by the central government, along Beijing, Shanghai, Changchun, Hangzhou and Hefei. Shenzhen government is on schedule to deploy another 500 E6 taxis by the end of June.