See how everybody smiles? (Click to enlarge.)

Somehow I missed until now this amazing treasure trove of Chinese propaganda posters. Incredible number of posters and Communist memorabilia from every phase of the glorious revolution, including the Great Leap Forward, 100 Flowers, the Cultural Revolution, etc. Amazing.

Link via danwei, where you can find lots of other great links.

Intriguing article on how China’s one-child policy has created unique challenges for today’s teachers, and how China is trying, not yet sucessfully, to inspire creativity in its young students:

At Heipingli, where 300 board from the age of six, a particular attraction for ambitious parents is the school’s emphasis on “creativity”, the new buzz word of China’s highly centralised education system, which is responsible for one in four of the world’s schoolchildren.

“Be creative” exhort the Chinese characters above the main entrance. Upstairs is a music room with a dozen saxophones, an art room containing Greek and Roman busts, a ballet studio complete with barres and mirrors and a computer suite with 56 machines. On every landing, there is a whiteboard for the children to draw on during break.

Yet, it all feels false, as if hurriedly bolted on. For the bulk of the teaching here, as in all eight of the schools I visited, is extremely formal. In classes of between 45 and 55, the pupils sit in packed rows facing the teacher, who stands in front of a blackboard and works steadily through a government-approved text book – approved for “ideological content, scientific spirit and adaptability to classroom instruction”.

The children are extraordinarily – almost eerily – well behaved and attentive, but their learning is passive; any “interactivity” is highly stylised, the questions and answers being learnt by rote. All proceed at the same pace. They work through printed exercises, complete piles of homework and are tested four times a year. It is an efficient drill-and-practice formula that anyone educated in Britain in the 1950s and earlier would recognise, and it doesn’t sit easily with creativity.

“We need to change our outdated teaching notions,” insists Dr Zhang Tiedo, vice-president of the city’s Academy of Educational Sciences. “We’re trying to promote the learner-centred approach. That’s why we’re so interested in multiple-intelligence theory [the notion that academic ability is only one among many], which is very big in the United States. We want the children to be more involved in their lessons and have more freedom and independence.”

This is a long and at times funny article. While it finds much to admire, especially regarding the students’ good behaviour and eagerness to learn (qualities that Chinese parents instill in their children at a very young age), it’s obvious the writer is somewhat amazed at the lack of individual attention students receive as well as the lack of self-expression that is encouraged (i.e., none at all).

Sorry, but I decided to delete the body of this post. I wrote it when I was really pissed off at a Berkeley blogger, and I’m making a resolution: whenever I write something in a state of passion, I will wait at least a few hours before posting it to ensure objectivity and calm. Mind you, I still think I was totally right and the Berkeley guy was way off-base….

A new article on the newly announced 3-year jail term for a businessman who wrote on the Net about rural unrest in China boasts the subheadline: “Beijing steps up Internet monitoring”:

A Chinese businessman who posted an article on the Internet on the sensitive topic of rural unrest has been sentenced to three years in jail for subversion, in a further sign that the authorities are stepping up their monitoring of political activities online, RFA’s Mandarin service reports.

Cai Lujun published four articles on an overseas Web site last year, in which he detailed the unfair levying of taxes and fees from rural residents of the northern province of Hebei, a Hong Kong-based human rights group said in a statement.

….

In a recent interview with RFA, Chinese economist He Qinglian said the Chinese government had recently launched a major overhaul of its existing system for monitoring Internet usage by its citizens, moving away from traditional firewalls and towards a centralized monitoring and control system.

“This monitoring system was jointly built by China’s Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of National Security,” He said. “The initial investment for this project has reached as high as U.S. $800 million.”

He, a former editor with the Shenzhen Legal Daily newspaper, said the system was among the most advanced of its kind in the world. “This is an attempt to establish a completely new centralized monitoring system after the firewalls installed in the 1990s began to lose effectiveness,” she said.

[Link Via Radio Free China]

Also, see Adam’s recent post for more reflections on this situation and how he deals with it.

Check out danwei’s article on the new paper that seems poised to start a newspaper war with its competitiors. Good photos, interesting story.

Treating SARS may be as simple as…a bowl of Chinese herbal soup:

Hong Kong (dpa) – Doctors believe Chinese herbal soup may be as effective in treating SARS as western anti-viral medicines, a news report said Wednesday.

Patients on mainland China were served with “qing fei jiy du tang” – which translates as soup for clearing the lungs – and showed better recovery rates than people in Hong Kong.

The SARS mortality rate in mainland China was 7 per cent, 10 per cent less than in Hong Kong where patients were treated with the drugs ribavirin and interferon.

University of Hong Kong microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung, quoted in the South China Morning Post, said the soup had been analysed and found to contain the chemical compound baicalin which is active against the SARS virus.

He said that although results were preliminary, the soup could offer a cheap alternative treatment in places where western drugs could not be afforded.

In the US, government officials playing golf with rich business execs wouldn’t be anything strange. It seems to be an issue in China, though, where the head of the CCP demonstrated poor judgment by dying on the green:

The head of the Chinese Communist party in Chairman Mao’s home town has died on a golf course, prompting a full investigation into his presence at such a potent symbol of capitalism.

Li Zhen’e, party secretary of Changsha in Hunan province, was at the course with two representatives of a local car manufacturer and two Japanese visitors. Late for his next appointment, Mr Li drove off in a golf buggy, but the vehicle went out of control and fell 10 feet on to a concrete road, killing him.

The location of his death raised many eyebrows and the party opened an inquiry. It concluded that there was no evidence of corruption, but it also found many niggling questions concerning the relationship between the party, big business and the sport of the “very wealthy”.

The findings did not satisfy some internet commentators, who asked whether Mr Li was doing public relations for his city, the car manufacturers or himself.

“Whatever the truth, public perception of corrupt officials seems to have been reinforced,” reported Xinhua, the state news agency.

Odd. There are golf courses in China, so how can someone be faulted for dying at one? Do all good CCP biggies die at the Great Hall of the People? As for a government official hanging out with car manufacturers, all I can say is Big Deal.

I was about to write a post on a story I just saw on BBC about AIDS in China when I saw that Adam had once more scooped me on it, so I won’t regurgitate the whole thing.

Let me just say that it was far more terrifying and heart-breaking on video than in print. Bottom line is that the BBC reporter visits an AIDS-afflicted village in which 600 of the 3000 inhabitants are afflicted and many have died already. The village is off-limits to foreigners. The authorities spot them, the reporters manage to flee but their Chinese escorts are arrested and are proabably in jail right now.

Adam also looks at the flurry of AIDS news generated by the Clinton-led conference this week in Beijing and concludes that things appear to be getting better. True. But we urgently need to keep in mind (and I’m sure Adam does) that it is getting better from a point below zero. IOW, they have such a long way to go that the government’s recent efforts (“November is AIDS awareness month”) seem hopelessly trivial. Still, they have to start somewhere, so let’s hope they are getting serious.

To give you an idea of how wretched life is for AIDS sufferers in China, let me just remind you of the first thing that happens when someone is diagnosed with AIDS there: The doctors must report it to local authorities who immediately report it to the unlucky victim’s employer. They are usually if not always fired at once and left in a state of permanent stigmatization. And it’s all downhill from there. There is no safety net, although this week the government says it will start helping the poorest victims with free drugs.

Okay, I know I tend to go on about this topic. But I’ll keep at it. The CCP would rather the world forget it, but we won’t let them, will we?

Related post: The indescribable tragedy of AIDS in China

The Hong Kong bloggers are talking about getting together sometime before Christmas in order to….well, I don’t exactly know why, but it seems like a cool idea. I will be in Beijing on December 4-7, so if any of the Chinese bloggers are in the neighborhood, please send me an email and maybe we can meet up.

An article I prepared for Open Source Politics on China and the liberal mentality has just been posted. Please check it out.

[For various reasons, I had to use a pseudonymonous last name in the article. Mainly it’s because my site delves a bit into my personal life and I don’t want future prospective employers checking up on my background to snoop around here.]