China news you need to know as chosen by the Danwei team.

On Yale Global:

How do Africans see China after all? Based on 163 interviews and over a decade of living in Africa, I shall argue that both views are wrong and right, depending on to what region of Africa and to which group of Africans one is referring...

...From this small sample, hailing from Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, Cape Verde and Zambia it becomes apparent that African elites clearly welcome the Chinese presence, while the people are growing increasing ambivalent.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:31 AM | Permalink

At The China Beat, Maura Cunningham reviews Obama's visit to China with links to the best coverage and commentary.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:27 AM | Permalink

In The China Daily:

China's anti-corruption chief He Guoqiang Thursday urged authorities to utilize the public's online comments and postings in the country's ongoing attempt to fight corruption.

He, secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the Communist Party of China (CPC), said channels should be expanded to solicit public opinions and efforts be made to give full play to the positive role that the Internet has had in the fight against corruption...

..."The top officials of the CPC have realized that online opinion is a weapon to curb graft, but it is a tough decision for them to make as the Party had been very cautious about handling information against a Party member," Ye [Duchu, a senior professor with the Central Party School] said.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 9:59 AM | Permalink

From The Global Times

American Jews are known for their formidable lobbying power in the US. How is this accomplished? What can Chinese learn to launch an effective lobby within US politics? [This] is an interview by Global Times reporter Lu Jingxian with Jack Rosen, chairman of the American Jewish Congress (AJC) and the American Council for World Jewry, on the issue.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 5:39 PM | Permalink

The Black China Hand gets called upon to provide the appearance of legal support for a Chinese company putting on the appearance of sophistication to score an international contract.

Part 2

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:43 PM | Permalink

From The China Daily:

A wealthy industrial boss and his family were rescued after a hostage taker was shot dead by police after a 24-hour standoff.

The hostage taker, identified as a migrant worker from Jiangxi province surnamed Lin, had demanded a ransom of 3 million yuan ($439,000).

Early Monday morning, armed with a pistol and two bags of self-made detonators, Lin barged into a private villa in Wenzhou, East China's Zhejiang province.

The villa's owner, Chen Anle, is the boss of Wenzhou Jinsheng Shoes Industry Co Ltd, a key enterprise of Wenzhou's shoe-making industry.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 5:01 PM | Permalink

For the Global Post, Jonathan Adams and Kathleen E. McLaughlin write about conditions in high-tech factories and explore solutions to the problem of sweatshops:

In our reporting, we heard sincere commitments to deal with these issues by frustrated executives who struggle with these complex economic realities. We also learned of a groundbreaking project to improve conditions at a Taiwan supplier for HP that appeared to have excellent results. Though limited in scope, the project offers some degree of hope that the big electronics brands can do more to fix the problem.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 4:55 PM | Permalink

The Financial Times writes about Feng Zhenghu (冯正虎), who has been denied admittance into China (on account of his activism):

Mr Feng, a Chinese human rights activist on behalf of individual Chinese complaining of illegal mistreatment at official hands, says Shanghai police, assisted by an ANA employee, physically forced him on to a flight back to Japan after he was barred from returning home for the eighth time.

“I refuse to enter Japan. For a Chinese to be kidnapped and taken to Japan like this is a humiliation for me and a humiliation for China,” he told the Financial Times during an interview in a Narita corridor.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:16 AM | Permalink

Andrew Galbraith in the China Economic Review, revealing what a farce the H1N1 panic has become:

The morning after arriving back in Shanghai from overseas, I felt distinctly unwell. Facing pressing deadlines and a worsening condition, I went to the doctor, who diagnosed me with nothing other than H1N1 – swine flu...

...Officially ... I wasn't diagnosed with H1N1, and the doctor instructed me that – officially – I had never been to see him. He gave me a course of Tamiflu and sent me on my way, with instructions not to leave my apartment for a week. If I noticed no improvement, I would be required to go to a fever clinic, but I was not to say that I had been to see a doctor before. (I'm now out of self-imposed quarantine, and no longer suffering from H1N1.)

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 9:03 AM | Permalink

The director talks to Time Weekly about his latest film, The Warrior and the Wolf (狼灾记), and the role of the market in China's film industry.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:48 AM | Permalink

China Hearsay tries to figure out which government agency will take responsibility to approve the Sichuan Tengzhong acquisition of Hummer:

Since NDRC told Xinhua that they were not responsible based on the type of deal, I’m thinking it was indeed the NDRC that Tengzhong first talked to (apparently provincial level, which then consulted with the State-level NDRC). Apparently NDRC, if you will pardon the American football reference, has punted.

Moreover, from what I understand, Tengzhong is neither a listed company nor a State-owned Enterprise, so I’m thinking neither CSRC (securities regulator) nor SASAC (State-owned enterprises and assets) would be in the picture. So how to approach this deal?

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:28 AM | Permalink

On the sidelines of the 2009 International Astronomy Year and Extraterrestrial Life Forum just concluded in Kunming, GoKunming.com filmed a video interview with organizer Zhang Yifang (张一方), founder of the Kunming UFO Research Association.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 11:53 AM | Permalink

The New York Times reports:

Suntech Power, China’s largest solar panel manufacturer, plans to open its first American plant near Phoenix, the company announced on Monday.

The plant is to begin production in the third quarter of 2010 and will initially employ 75 people, probably rising over time to 200, according to Roger Efird, a managing director of Suntech.

Mr. Efird said Suntech had been publicly considering a manufacturing site in the United States for several years. Solar panels are heavy, he said, so as the American market grows, the company decided to place a factory closer to its customers.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:29 AM | Permalink

Evan Osnos interviews Shi Yinhong for the New Yorker blog, where he asked questions about the difference stances of the US and China towards Iran's nuclear weapons:

That sounds like China and the United States are not going to share much more than goodwill on this trip. Will China go further than that?
Sometimes expectations can have a gap, but both sides are used to this. I don’t think that President Obama will say, “If China does not agree, then I will be angry about everything else.” The Chinese are used to this, too; on some issues they will go a long way to meet Americans, but on some issues they will stay in the same place.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:24 AM | Permalink

The Global Times has a piece on the detainment of advocates surrounding the Sanlu milk scandal.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 3:55 PM | Permalink

"Obama" is transliterated in the Chinese press as 奥巴马 (àobāmǎ), but a promotional poster distributed yesterday by the US Embassy uses 欧巴马 (ōubāmǎ).

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:51 PM | Permalink

The Global Times reports that Zhao Lianhai, an organizer of victims of last year's melamine milk scandal, has been arrested for "provoking an incident":

The arrest occurred just two hours after Zhao and Wang Gang, the father of a baby stricken by Sanlu's poisoned milk powder, successfully received an official apology from Haidian police.

Zhao and Wang were invited by the Haidian police on Friday to address a previous dispute. Officers, who conducted the controversial detention of Wang, gave the father an apology and paid for Wang's physical examination.

"A police car followed us all the way from my home to the Haidian police headquarters," Zhao said. He even took a picture of the car that followed him.

Two hours after Zhao returned home, Daxing police arrested him.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:31 PM | Permalink

Critiquing a poorly translated, poorly edited guidebook to subway safety.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:53 AM | Permalink

Obama is in Beijing today. From Xinhua:

At a joint press conference with Obama after the talks, Hu said he had "very good talks" with the U.S. president, and that they made a deep exchange of views on the China-U.S. relationship and major international and regional issues of common concern and reached consensus on many important issues.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:20 AM | Permalink

The Telegraph reports:

And while it is accepted that little more can be done to protest the raising of the vessel, there are hopes that China might be encouraged to conduct a new investigation into the remains of the crew, which experts believe would have been recovered.

After all, they point out, the CSS Hunley, one of the first submarines ever built and sunk in 1864 during the American Civil War, contained eight skeletons that had been almost perfectly preserved when it was recovered from Charleston harbour in April 2004.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 9:46 AM | Permalink