A Chinese company that assembles devices for Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) hired children at its production facilities and forced employees to work excessive hours, violating labor laws, China Labor Watch said in a report.
In the last decade, the world has started taking more notice of Central Asia. For the United States and its allies, the region is a valuable supply hub for the Afghanistan war effort. For Russia, it is an arena in which to exert political influence. For China, it is a source of energy and a critical partner for stabilizing and developing the restive Xinjiang province in the Middle Kingdom's west. Some commentators have referred to Washington, Moscow, and Beijing's renewed activity in the region as a modern iteration of the Great Game. But unlike the British and Russian empires in their era of competition and conquest, the Central Asian governments are working to use renewed external involvement to their sovereign advantage, fending off disruptive demands and reinforcing their political control at home. Accordingly, the Central Asian case today is not a throwback to the past but a guide to what is to come: the rise of new players and the decline of Western influence in a multipolar world.
DreamWorks Animation SKG, the Hollywood studio behind hits like “Shrek,” “Kung Fu Panda” and “Madagascar 3,” said Tuesday it planned to co-develop a $3.1 billion cultural and entertainment district in Shanghai with a group of Chinese partners.
Long a zone of contention among a number of littoral states, the South China Sea is fast becoming the focus of one of the most serious bilateral disputes between America and China. Over the weekend China’s foreign ministry summoned an American diplomat to express “strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition” to a statement issued by the state department on August 3rd.
On July 23rd in Guizhou province, lawyers obtained a partial victory for some of the defendants accused of involvement in organized crime. Not all the accused were as fortunate, and the limited results came with the support of an intense Internet campaign to publicize gross violations of China’s Criminal Procedure Law by police and judges.
When China’s fallen political grand dame, Gu Kailai, steps into a courtroom this week to face a murder charge, one of the few things we can expect with any certainty is the verdict: guilty. Barring a political tornado between now and the scheduled start of her trial, on Thursday, Gu will be convicted in the poisoning of her erstwhile associate, Neil Heywood, a British businessman who, in effect, seems to have ambled into an executive suite at Chinese Communism Inc. and ended up dead in a hotel room in the mountains.
Most shop owners in a city of roughly 8 million people have pulled down their shutters to avoid what they fear will be stringent enforcement of a city ordinance tied to the hosting of the 2013 National Games.
Small business owners in Shenyang, Liaoning province, say some stores have been closed since late July because their owners fear they’ll be slapped with heavy penalties during a citywide sweep by the local public security bureau.
Over the weekend, news broke that three Baidu employees were arrested on suspicion of accepting payoffs in return for deleting posts from Baidu’s online forums. A fourth employee was not arrested, but was fired by Baidu. A Baidu spokeswoman told the BBC that the former employees had been paid “tens of thousands” of RMB (i.e. thousands of dollars) for the deletions, and stressed that Baidu had proactively fired these employees and reported their cases to the police.
The broadcasting regulator has submitted a proposal to the State Council for the establishment of a national company to lead the integration of China cable networks. The move is the latest step toward long-planned integration of media networks. The plan, proposed by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), is awaiting State Council review, a source close to the situation said. Funding for the new company would mainly come from the Ministry of Finance. To create the new company, local cable assets would gradually be merged, the source said.
As the Chinese Internet hurtles headlong into an uncertain future, the country’s legal system struggles to catch up. Pressed for time, the government’s reaction may be to fashion the legal equivalent of a blunt axe, rather than a finely crafted scalpel, against lawsuits filed by private citizens involving censorship on the Internet. The possible bellwether: One aggrieved netizen who calls herself “Fire Dragon Woman.”
