Daniel Aaron Lazar » AP China

Labor Abuse in China at Foxconn

Dan Lazar — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:02:25 +0000

Mike Daisey was a self-described “worshipper in the cult of Mac.” Then he saw some photos from a new iPhone, taken by workers at the factory where it was made. Mike wondered: Who makes all my crap? He traveled to China to find out.

It seems that our fetishization of new technology has blinded us to blatant abuse of the workers of the world. This is a much needed reminder and a critical view of Foxconn.

Wikileaks: no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square, cables claim

Dan Lazar — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:34:37 +0000

Secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing have shown there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square when China put down student pro-democracy demonstrations 22 years ago.

“James Miles, who was the BBC correspondent in Beijing at the time, admitted that he had “conveyed the wrong impression” and that “there was no massacre on Tiananmen Square. Protesters who were still in the square when the army reached it were allowed to leave after negotiations with martial law troops [ ...] There was no Tiananmen Square massacre, but there was a Beijing massacre”.

What!?

Why did he “convey the wrong impression”?

Well at least there was still a Beijing Massacre. I guess.

Two articles on China and religion

Dan Lazar — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 10:59:33 +0000

Two short articles. One on China and Tibetan Buddhism, the other on China vs. the Vatican.

Liberalism under attack in China

Dan Lazar — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 10:48:09 +0000

On May 23rd four people went to a police station in Beijing with a petition demanding justice. Victims of official wrongdoing often make such trips, and usually they are given short shrift. But this was no ordinary group of the downtrodden. The petition bore the names of nearly 10,000 people accusing a liberal intellectual of slandering Mao Zedong and attempting to overthrow the Communist Party itself. Emboldened by a chill political wind, diehard Maoists in China are rising to confront their critics.

The Maoists’ appeal for the arrest of Mao Yushi, a well-known economist (and no relation of the late chairman), is their most concerted public attempt in many years to put pressure on the government. A clutch of Maoist websites frequently vilify intellectuals such as Mr Mao. But campaigning openly for someone to be put on trial is unusual. It is a symptom of a recent escalation of ideological struggles between China’s West-leaning liberals and conservative hardliners.

China: The Long March to Capitalism

Dan Lazar — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 11:47:41 +0000

A four part cartoon series chronicling China’s transition to capitalism. Really interesting.

China’s Communist party: Searching for its softer side

Dan Lazar — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 16:30:31 +0000

In the past several days, China has been doing much soul-searching. More than 300 of the Communist Party’s most powerful leaders met in Beijing and discussed ways of boosting the nation’s “cultural soft power”: an admission that for all the country’s economic prowess it lacks the magnetic draw of a country like America. Ordinary Chinese, however, have been more preoccupied with a hit-and-run accident that caused the death of a two-year-old girl. A dearth of what one Chinese newspaper commentary called “moral soft power” has been widely blamed for her demise and the seeming cold-heartedness of passersby.

Talent shows in China voting please, we’re Chinese

Dan Lazar — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 16:16:50 +0000

HAS China returned to the days of central planning? Or is it just stomping on anything that smacks of democracy? The Chinese government’s decision to suspend the airing of “Happy Girl”, a television talent show with hundreds of millions of fans, has whipped up a storm of questions far tougher than any that its dolled-up contestants had to face.

A special report on China: Rising power, anxious state

Dan Lazar — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 13:39:56 +0000

In less than a decade China could be the world’s largest economy. But its continued economic success is under threat from a resurgence of the state and resistance to further reform.

The Economist offers another special report on China. I’ve excerpted the most relevant articles.

Remebering the Boxer Rebellion

Dan Lazar — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:22:16 +0000

The Boxer Uprising, 11 years before the collapse of China’s last imperial dynasty, was portrayed in Western accounts as a savage outburst of primitive xenophobia directed at the West and its civilising religion, Christianity. The northern Chinese peasants with their red headscarves, who believed in a magic that protected them from foreign bullets and in the power of ancient martial arts that could defeat the industrial world’s most powerful armies, were described with a mixture of fear and racist scorn. But in China the Boxers are officially remembered as somewhat misguided patriots.

Great piece on how the Boxer Rebellion is (mis)remembered in China today.

The United States and China During the Cold War

Dan Lazar — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:59:49 +0000

Warren Cohen of University of Maryland offers this concise summary of Sino-US policy during the Cold War.

Here is the response sheet

Don’t worry, be happy: The government introduces the country’s new mantra

Dan Lazar — Fri, 20 May 2011 09:30:59 +0000

THE pursuit of happiness, runs one of the most consequential sentences ever penned, is an unalienable right. That Jeffersonian sentiment seems to have influenced even China’s normally strait-laced, rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC), which has just wrapped up its annual session. Increasing happiness, officials now insist, is more important than increasing GDP. A new five-year plan adopted at the meeting has been hailed as a blueprint for a “happy China”.

China’s government is much less impressive than many Westerners believe

Dan Lazar — Fri, 20 May 2011 09:28:39 +0000

IF THERE was one thing that the world’s tycoons agreed on at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, it was that the Chinese state is a paragon of efficiency—especially compared with the doltish, venal clowns in Washington and Brussels. “Beijing really gets things done,” sighed one American chief executive. “Their government people are so much smarter: it’s terrifying,” enthused one of the world’s richest men. The chalets resounded with stories of contracts rapidly signed, roads speedily built and young engineers designing brilliant cars and software programs.

There is indeed much to admire about parts of the Chinese government. Over the past 30 years the regime has overseen perhaps the biggest increase in economic well-being ever, with several hundred million people moving into the middle class (even if the state had previously been the main thing that held them back). China is led by a group of people who take government enormously seriously there are countless stronger forces pushing in the opposite direction.

For all this, there is something of a Potemkin village about the Chinese state. It is, after all, not terribly hard for a dictatorship to build roads and railways faster than a democracy can. Multinational companies and the educated middle classes are doing well from the state, but the poorer majority in this ever more unequal country get a raw deal. And even if some of its leaders are trying to move closer to Singapore’s model,.

Gay Marriage With Chinese Characteristics

Dan Lazar — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 08:00:26 +0000

SHANGHAI, China—”I’m here to find a lesbian, to be with me and to build a home,” No. 11 says to the crowd clustered on floor cushions at a sunlit yoga studio in Shanghai. No. 11 is a muscular man in a flannel shirt and cargo pants, and he easily commands the attention of the crowd of 40 or so young men and women who are gingerly sipping glasses of wine and whispering to their neighbors.

“In my view, a 30-year-old man should start thinking about having a family, but two men can’t hold each other’s hands in the street. We’re not allowed to be a family,” he says. The crowd nods.

I’m at a fake-marriage market, where Chinese lesbians and gay men meet to find a potential husband or wife. In China, the pressure to form a heterosexual marriage is so acute that 80 percent of China’s gay population marries straight people, according to sexologist Li Yinhe, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. To avoid such unions, six months ago, Shanghai’s biggest gay Web site, inlemon.cn, started to hold marriage markets once a month.

Read on from Slate

Martin Jacques: Understanding the rise of China

Dan Lazar — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 07:59:12 +0000

Speaking at a TED Salon in London, economist Martin Jacques asks: How do we in the West make sense of China and its phenomenal rise? The author of “When China Rules the World,” he examines why the West often puzzles over the growing power of the Chinese economy, and offers three building blocks for understanding what China is and will become.

China Bans Reincarnation Without Government Permission

Dan Lazar — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 07:55:01 +0000

In one of history’s more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is “an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.” But beyond the irony lies China’s true motive: to cut off the influence of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual and political leader, and to quell the region’s Buddhist religious establishment more than 50 years after China invaded the small Himalayan country.

Read on

5 Myths About the Chinese Communist Party

Dan Lazar — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 07:49:57 +0000

Richard McGregor, former Beijing bureau chief of the Financial Times tries to dispel 5 myths about the CCP

China to create largest mega city in the world with 42 million people

Dan Lazar — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 07:44:08 +0000

The “Turn The Pearl River Delta Into One” scheme will create a 16,000 sq mile urban area that is 26 times larger geographically than Greater London, or twice the size of Wales.

The new mega-city will cover a large part of China’s manufacturing heartland, stretching from Guangzhou to Shenzhen and including Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Huizhou and Zhaoqing. Together, they account for nearly a tenth of the Chinese economy.

Over the next six years, around 150 major infrastructure projects will mesh the transport, energy, water and telecommunications networks of the nine cities together, at a cost of some 2 trillion yuan (£190 billion). An express rail line will also connect the hub with nearby Hong Kong.

Read on from the Telegraph

Photo Essays of China

Dan Lazar — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 07:33:56 +0000

As the People’s Republic of China gets ready to celebrate its 60th anniversary on Oct. 1, 2009, a look back at the watershed moments that helped make the nation what it is today

Check out this great Photo Essay which shows the changes in China in its first 60 years.

Then explore this Photo Essay which shows China’s 60th birthday party.

The Chinese PM

Dan Lazar — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 05:02:15 +0000

Here’s a little piece on the curious role of Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao

TV in China

Dan Lazar — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 04:57:17 +0000

Despite government meddling and rampant piracy, commercial television is surging in the Middle Kingdom

What might this mean?