Sure there are a ton of journalist Olympic blogs out there, but in my (semi-biased) opinion, one of the better correspondents in Beijing is the CSM’s Peter Ford. He’s a journalist who has covered stories in Latin America, the Middle East, Europe, and the Soviet Union and he has a knack for getting a story without needing to tart it up or sensationalize the issue at hand.  In the PRC, Peter’s articles are frequently translated/mangled for the Cankao Xiaoxi and the Global Times among other party rags.

The fact that YJ works for the CSM may skew my opinion slightly, but Peter has been linked to enough in this space by Richard and other writers that I feel comfortable plugging their new blog: Olympic Glory.   Check it out.

Raj

This is the likely conclusion of reports produced by at least local Chinese administrations in regards to the May earthquake – if indeed any of the promised investigations were ever held.

China buys the silence of grieving parents

“We were rounded up and ordered to sign the contract if we wanted to collect the government’s gift of free life insurance,” Liu explained. “They also said we would get £5,000 in cash as compensation for our dead children.” Some parents were already signing their forms.

“How do we even know if it is real life insurance?” he said. “If we accept the cash, my wife and I want to use it to take the local government to court over the death of our daughter, but we’re afraid it is not enough to cover the legal fees.

“If we don’t sign the contract, we are afraid we will be left with no children and no money to look after us when we grow old.

“We’re thinking about having another child to safeguard our future. Eventually that child will also have to go to school and we’re afraid if we don’t cooperate with the government now they will cause problems for the child later on.”

If the central Chinese government wants to say that the parents are taking the money willingly, they are suggesting Chinese people put a cash value on their children that can supercede a fair and open investigation into their death – would this be the “modern China” the CCP is building? Personally I would suggest the authorities are coercing parents into agreeing to take hush-money through lies (such as “everyone else is going to sign, so you can achieve nothing by yourself”) and threats (“take the money or you get nothing, and if you protest you will be arrested and beaten/imprisoned for causing unrest”).

The “official” report that was disclosed in relation to Hanwang stated that the school had collapsed purely because of the earthquake.

On Monday, the parents from Hanwang met for the fourth time with the deputy mayor of Deyang, which administrates Hanwang. The deputy mayor, Zhang Jinming, verbally delivered the conclusion of the government investigation – that the school had collapsed solely because of the earthquake – and declared the case closed, parents said.

Although some areas were very badly hit, in others it was the case that other buildings in the area were left standing when the schools collapsed. Will investigations be held by the central authorities and published in full, giving the honest answer as to why in a number of areas schools (especially those frequented by the children of poor families) were hardest hit? I would say “we can only hope”, but judging by past form it is likely that even if some people are made examples of, the central government will then seek to bury the matter by saying it has been dealt with and not hold a full, open inquiry. After all, the local authorities cannot instigate national censorship of a news item, such as gagging the official media.

UPDATE

The following is an extract of a BBC report in relation to the earthquake.

A Chinese teacher has been detained for posting images on the internet of schools that collapsed in the Sichuan earthquake, a rights group has said. Human Rights in China said Liu Shaokun had been ordered to serve a year of “re-education through labour”. Mr Liu was detained for “disseminating rumours and destroying social order”, the group said.

The 12 May quake killed nearly 70,000 people. Many of those who died were children whose schools collapsed. The poor condition of the school buildings has become a sensitive political issue for the government, and grieving parents have staged numerous protests demanding an inquiry. Many have accused local officials of colluding with builders to allow them to get away with cheap and unsafe practices.

“Instead of investigating and pursuing accountability for shoddy and dangerous school buildings, the authorities are resorting to re-education through labour to silence and lock up concerned citizens like teacher Liu Shaokun and others,” said Human Rights in China Executive Director Sharon Hom.

Who thinks that the central government is going to ride to Mr Liu’s rescue? Because if it doesn’t then it’s another sign that at the very least it approves of the local/regional governments’ actions in suppressing reporting/calls for fair investigations into why so many schools collapsed. Indeed the central government is in many ways responsible for this and other similar human rights violations because it keeps “re-education through labour” legal – an administration that really cared about human rights would abolish it, or at least make it a punishment that can only be handed down by the criminal court.

The next great superpower? Pomfret has always said “no.” He backs it up, at least to his satisfaction, in a new article offering plenty of statistical evidence and several examples of the monumental challenges China faces.

Personally, I think China is going to do okay, and probably even better than okay. But the road to superpowerdom will be a long and winding one. (Oh, how profound. As mentioned, I’m only putting up short posts for the time being, more like linklets than posts.)

Another morning quickie. Observations from the front:

Street Traffic. It usually takes me a full hour to 90 minutes to get from the CBD to Shangdi up in Haidian. Lately I’ve been getting there in 30-40 minutes. It’s like a dream. The air seems cleaner, too.

Censorship. A lot more Web sites seem unblocked nowadays. How long will it last? I even heard that China Digital Times was open for a while (seems blocked again).

Broadband speed: Lately the Chinese Internet has been hopelessly constipated. Everyone I know has complained about the slowdown, and the accepted truth is that the government, in its hyper-angst over terrorism and disharmony, is filtering every single syllable as it flows through their censorship funnel. I know, that sort of contradicts my second point above. Loosening up on censorship while clamping down at the same time. But then, as we all know, China is “a land of contradictions.”

A morning quickie – this is probably all over the China blogs right now but is too interesting to pass up – a post that translates Olympic propaganda posters teaching the Chinese people how to interact with outsiders flocking into the city in the weeks ahead. The 8 Don’t Asks will soon have quite an audience, having made it onto Yahoo’s top 5 stories today, which is where I saw it.

The 8th rule is particularly useful.

Lastly, there was one rule on a poster about proper behavior for commuters and pedestrians that seemed a bit odd:

When men and women are walking together, men should generally walk on the outside, and the person carrying things should normally walk on the right. Men should help women carry things, but must not help women carry their handbags. When three people are walking side-by-side, elderly should walk in the middle. Where there are many cars around, men should walk on the side of the sidewalk closer to the street. When four people are walking together, it is best to walk two-by-two.

It sounds to me as if the people are being asked to mobilize into tactically advantageous walking formations, so as to maximize protection for women and elderly against rough and rowdy foreign hordes which will soon be threatening the safety of Beijing’s streets and sidewalks with unchecked groping and thieving. To sum up, it seems the message behind these posters is “Smile, but don’t let the foreigners get close.” Beijing welcomes you, indeed

To avoid any confusion and misimpressions, this post is not making fun of the Chinese people nor is it racist or hateful. This is a funny post (there are 7 more of these rules, so read it all), and the butt of the joke are the propagandists writing this drivel, not the Chinese citizens who pay their salaries. Your tax dollars at work….

Jeremiah

I seriously hope this is just a hysterical rumor run amok…but then again I have seen people of color refused service at Beijing bars before while Chinese and caucasians continued to be served, so I guess anything is possible.  That said, I agree with The Shanghaiist: even by Beijing Olympic standards, any official who actually went around telling people this stuff would have to be mind-boggling, gobsmackingly stupid.

UPDATE: As suspected, this has the strong whiff of a rumor that went out of control.  Beijing nightlife guru Jim Boyce was on the case immediately and came up empty.  Closer to home, crusading journalist YJ was also calling around, talking to several owners including Huxley, and similarly came away empty.

I’m guessing that this is a “somebody said something to somebody else” game of telephone that ran amok.

It is an open secret that various levels of discrimination do exist at Beijing’s nightspots, we’re just glad that it hasn’t become official policy.

Raj

The BBC reports that the algae that was causing considerable worry in regards to the Olympic sailing events.

The Chinese government has successfully cleared tonnes of algae that was blocking the Olympic sailing course in the eastern city of Qingdao. A special protection zone was set up using a boom and netting. But in other areas the thick bright green algae is still polluting the beaches.

My fear was that all the algae couldn’t be cleared – which may well still be the case when the sailing event starts next month. But because the sailing area has been successfully cordoned off that won’t be a problem for the athletes and their supporters. So may the best sailors win – if they can deal with the potential for light winds and (so I have been told) fog.

But I still have doubts about the Olympics. Not so much over the events at Qingdao or even the Beijing Olympics as a whole. There are concerns over many matters regarding 2008, such as air pollution and the increasing suppression of human rights in China – as opposed to the promise that they would improve (who actually believed the CCP would willingly co-operate on this?) – in order to promote the public image of a “harmonious society” to the world. No, it’s the IOC.

Whenever there’s a problem with the Olympics in terms of delivery of the Games, it is the host nation that gets the blame. Sure that is usually justified because they have years and years to plan and build facilities. But the IOC’s role in choosing the hosts in the first place is rarely focused on. Why is it that Beijing was selected given its pollution problem even back when selection took place? This was only going to get worse given China’s growing economy even under the most optimistic projections. Similarly selecting Los Angeles in 1984 was questionable. Back to China, an argument advanced was that awarding the Games would encourage China to improve its human rights. Why? The CCP has repeatedly demonstrated that it sees power in China as a right, not a privilege. Indeed it believes it is the organisation making the “sacrifice” because without it the country would fall apart because no one else can rule. Well, sure, if you suppress a free media and other political organisations that would make it difficult to find alternatives to govern a nation.

Really I do not think that there should be any more competitions to award the Games. The idea of it being rotated around the world is essentially a way for the IOC to exploit international competition in getting cities (and essentially nations) to promise to offer more than their rivals. In London the IOC demanded a fleet of limousines and dedicated car lanes, as it wasn’t enough to have special buses and coaches laid on (only the little people use buses, they would say). As a result IOC members get an endless supply of freebies and are treated like royalty wherever they go. There is probably still a certain about of bribery going on as well.

This could all be stopped by having the Olympics happen at fixed locations. If the Olympics used to be held at Olympia, why not have a complex built and maintained there or somewhere else suitable in Greece? Or indeed re-use facilities at the location of a previous Olympics – maybe rotate between a few cities at most. It would save an absolute fortune. But the problem is the IOC only cares about the amount of money that it can generate from the Olympics and little else.

We already have the site of the 2012 Olympics agreed upon, and it is highly likely that 2016 and 2020 will be finalised through open competitions. Will we ever live to see the Olympics become an event focused on sport and mutual respect rather than money-spinning and petty nationalism? Maybe not, but one can only hope.

They say you can tell a blog is about to die when its owner keeps putting up posts about the blog itself – why they can’t post, how busy they are, etc. I’ve put up a lot of those this year, and here (obviously) is yet another.

I don’t think the blog is going to die, at least not anytime soon. But the home stretch has arrived, and from now through September I will have to all but ignore this hobby of mine. This weekend will probably be the last one I have to myself. Maybe one final blog-burst, and then several weeks of retirement.

If I come out of this summer’s fun in one piece, I should have a lot to blog about once it’s over. (I’m already collecting stories, and I actually think I might have enough material for a book.) Which is my long-winded, pretentious way of saying, please be patient, forgive the lack of posts, and trust me, I know how feeble some of my recent offerings have been. It’ll all turn around in September. (I’m trying to convince myself.)

In an earlier post I referenced an article from 2004 that I found one of the most disturbing ever, but unfortunately it had vanished from the Internet. Some of you asked how you could find the article, and I’m happy to say the link is now restored, and I can’t recommend it strongly enough. We sometimes need reminders of what’s going on outside our line of vision.

(The original article showed the faces of the dangerous criminals. They are gone now, but you can see their photos over here.)

The author of that article, Philip Pan, has also recently put out a new book, Out of Mao’s Shadow, reviewed in today’s NY Times. I already have a copy and plan on doing my own review sometime soon, though that may have to wait until September. Meanwhile, read the old article and the new book review.

The “Shanghai Sex Blogger” is back in the news thanks to a press release pimpingtouting his new book. (No, it’s not about his sexploits in Shanghai; it’s about why China “will never be great.”) In that same link, Danwei puts the pieces together and reveals the blogger’s probable identity. If, at this point, anyone still cares.