The suicide of a senior editor working for China's Communist Party newspaper has sparked strong reaction from Chinese cultural and media circles and on the internet. Xu Huaiqian, 44, was editor-in-chief for the Dadi (Earth) supplement of the People's Daily. According to its official microblog, he jumped to his death on 22 August.
One of the longest bridges in northern China collapsed on Friday just nine months after it opened, triggering a storm of criticism from Chinese Internet users and underscoring questions about the quality of construction during China’s rapid expansion of its infrastructure.
Government jobs are now the top choice for many of China’s job seekers, according to a survey released this week, in a finding that illustrates an undercurrent of unease in the world’s No. 2 economy.
After three decades of torrid growth, China is encountering an unfamiliar problem with its newly struggling economy: a huge buildup of unsold goods that is cluttering shop floors, clogging car dealerships and filling factory warehouses.
This week on Sinica, we take a break from the trial of Gu Kailai, the 18th Party Congress, and the recent flurry of disgruntled expat blog posts to cast our gaze back to the age of Mongol politics, barbarian cross-border raids, and that period in Chinese history which gave us the Great Wall as it currently stands in the mountains north of Beijing.
There was another side to the anti-Japanese demonstrations that rocked Chinese cities this weekend, reacting to Japanese activists who had landed on a disputed island chain in the East China Sea. As Chinese protesters asserted their national prestige in ways symbolic and not, their countrymen on social media held a very different discussion on the Diaoyu Islands controversy. These two Chinese reactions, seemingly contradictory, hint at the contours and complexities of Chinese nationalism, and what it means for China both domestically and abroad.
Michael Anti (aka Jing Zhao) has been blogging from China for 12 years. Despite the control the central government has over the Internet -- "All the servers are in Beijing" -- he says that hundreds of millions of microbloggers are in fact creating the first national public sphere in the country's history, and shifting the balance of power in unexpected ways.
From their website:
TED is a nonpartisan nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks. TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics — from science to business to global issues — in more than 110 languages. Meanwhile, independently run TEDx events help share ideas in communities around the world.
From their website:
The Hindu, started in 1878 as a weekly, became a daily in 1889 and from then on has been steadily growing to the circulation of 15,58,379 copies (ABC: July-December 2012) and a readership of about 22.58 lakhs.
The Hindu's independent editorial stand and its reliable and balanced presentation of the news have over the years, won for it the serious attention and regard of the people who matter in India and abroad.
The Hindu uses modern facilities for news gathering, page composition and printing. It is printed in seventeen centres including the Main Edition at Chennai (Madras) where the Corporate Office is based. The printing centres at Coimbatore, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Madurai, Noida, Visakhapatnam, Thiruvanathapuram, Kochi, Vijayawada, Mangalore, Tiruchirapalli, Kolkata, Hubli, Mohali, Allahabad and Kozhikode are connected with high speed data lines for news transmission across the country.
Even as Chinese officials have maintained a steady silence on when the Party Congress — the most important meeting in a decade — will be convened, the government has put in place security measures and issued corruption warnings — the first indications that the Chinese capital is finally readying for the much-anticipated political gathering.
