The Sinocism China Newsletter

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• Premier’s use lands fashion firm in hot seat — Shanghai Daily
  A CHINESE online fashion retailer is being probed for cashing in on Premier Wen Jiabao’s popularity to promote its latest T-shirts – an act that might have violated the country’s law on advertisement, Beijing commerce authorities said. Vancl, popular for its pop culture apparel, stirred up controversy on Tuesday by advertising a new series of T-shirts printed with Wen’s signature quotations like “Forget About Me” and “Self-Reflection.
• China-Bashing Is Popular but Could Do More Harm Than Good – Bloomberg
  Bloomberg has a sensible editorial page
• Neil Heywood did not work for UK government, Hague insists – Telegraph
• Cambodian police shoot dead leading anti-logging campaigner | World news | guardian.co.uk
  how much of this logging is for China?// Environmental activist Chut Wutty reportedly shot dead at police checkpoint after refusing to hand over evidence of illegal logging
• The US Has Been Fixated On The Renminbi, When We Should Be Pushing For More Market Access – Business Insider
• Barton Biggs: Jim Chanos Doesn’t Know What’s Going On In China – Business Insider
• Mongolia: mine ownership gets political | beyondbrics | News and views on emerging markets from the Financial Times – FT.com
• Inside Boxun, China’s media muckraker | FP Passport
• China Seeks Boost From Low-Income Housing as Real Estate Slows – Bloomberg
  Social housing, as it is known in China, is not just meant to give the growing numbers of low-income workers and pensioners affordable places to live. It is also intended to boost the steel, cement, copper, and aluminum industries as prices sag and construction slows in the real estate market. With growth in private housing likely to be little changed, total floor space for social housing should grow 30 percent to 40 percent this year, predicted Wang Tao, an economist at UBS Securities in Hong Kong.
• 大摩行贿中国官员案细节：300万如何买到600万 – 宏观 – 21世纪网
  on the morgan stanley, garth peterson shanghai bribery case SEC的起诉文件透露，彼得森在任职大摩房地产主管期间，多次利用吴永华的背景和关系，获得重量级房地产项目。
• 人民日报-徐才厚在全军加强网络思想政治教育座谈会上强调加强军队网络宣传教育工作推动思想政治建设创新发展
• Meth Smugglers Tried to Sell Secret Drone Parts to China | Danger Room | Wired.com
  while smugglers are smugglers — often agnostic to the material they’re carting — it seems unlikely that the Chinese government saw fit to recruit drug traffickers for sophisticated intelligence operations. And stealing a U.S. military surveillance plane before flying it back to China? Good luck with that. It stretches imagination that China’s spooks would be crazy enough to do it.
• Leaning on US, Philippines boldly pushes back on China in sea dispute – CSMonitor.com
• 军报称网上意识形态斗争尖锐 需主动占领阵地_新闻_腾讯网
• 人民日报社长披露薄熙来事件系列社论刊发始末_新闻_腾讯网
  [导读]张研农称人民日报在薄熙来事件中的相关评论确定了基调，起到统一全党全国思想认识、安定民心稳定大局的作用，显示了强大的舆论引导能力，具有很高的价值，应该能写进政治史、新闻史。
• China reform drive boosted by Bo’s fall – FT.com
  People familiar with Mr Wen’s thinking said he had become increasingly convinced that democratic reforms were needed to maintain social, economic and political stability. While the premier has said as much in numerous speeches to mostly western audiences, his definition of “democracy” has always appeared ambiguous and his ability to push through serious reforms limited.
  These people say his goals include the gradual expansion of village elections to the national level and making the judiciary independent of the party.
• Son of Bo Xilai Says Father’s Ouster ‘Destroyed My Life’ – Bloomberg
• 网络“删帖公司”利益链曝光：删负面报道收费1万_中国经济网??国家经济门户
• FT Alphaville » China is being buried alive in copper
  According to Wikipedia, compulsive hoarding is a disorder characterized by the excessive acquisition and inability or unwillingness to discard large quantities of objects that would seemingly qualify as useless or without value. We’d like to make the case that China is suffering from this disorder and that we’re at the stage where a psychopharmacological intervention needs to be organised by China’s friends and family. If not China’s hoarding tendencies could destroy the world as we know it.
• 凡客采用国家领导人形象做广告 遭工商部门查处_互联网_科技时代_新浪网
  did online retailer Vancl break the law when it used images of wen jiabao and deng xiaoping in ads? Relevant organs are investigating// 新华社北京4月26日专电(新华社“中国网事”记者南婷、张舵、郭宇靖)近日，凡客诚品(微博)官方网站推出系列T恤，并用国家领导人图片做大幅广告，遭到网民批评。工商部门表示，该广告已经违反法律，将依法对相关企业进行查处。
• West dwelling on Bo case to score cheap points-Global Times
  The Chinese public’s interest on the case of Bo Xilai is dwindling. In today’s China, it is hard to keep public attention focused for long on one thing. However, some Western media are unusually keen on the case. They consecutively release special coverage, but many of their stories do not have detailed or convincing sources, but are all vividly described. They try to inoculate their opinions into the Chinese public’s minds before final official information is released.
• Asma_Assad_Vogue_February_2011
• Israeli military chief: Iran will not build nuclear bomb – The Washington Post
• Vogue’s flattering profile on Assad’s wife disappears from Web – The Washington Post
  The 3,200-word article apparently proved so embarrassing to the magazine that it scrubbed it from its Web site, an almost-unheard-of step for a mainstream media organization and a generally acknowledged violation of digital etiquette.
• Sinica Podcast-Chinese Industrial Policy and the Automotive Market
  this episode of Sinica features special guest Greg Anderson, a political scientist and expert on the Chinese automobile market whose research involves tracking the differences between state-owned and private automotive companies
• Opinion: China’s cyber trade war against U.S. – Rep. Mike Rogers and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger – POLITICO.com
  By REP. MIKE ROGERS and REP. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER | The Chinese government has been quietly pursuing a strategy to help project that nation into superpower status. China steals as much intellectual property as it can from U.S. companies and uses it to artificially and unfairly compete in the global marketplace. Beijing uses this information to further its military modernization and, most important, to help fuel economic growth.
• After Bo Xilai Brother Resigns, China Everbright Shares Jump 7.5% – China Real Time Report – WSJ
  The resignation on China Everbright International deputy chairman Bo Xiyong, the older brother of fallen former Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai, may have represented yet another unwelcome blow to the Bo family, but it appears to have cheered investors.
• Marriott to Double Number of Hotels in China as Tourism Grows – Bloomberg
• The parallel rise of China’s Bo Xilai and a business ally | World | Reuters
  DALIAN, China (Reuters) – The wide-open sweep of the Xinghai Plaza in the Chinese port city of Dalian is the legacy of Bo Xilai, the dynamic former mayor who was China’s most openly ambitious politician, and who is now at the centre of China’s biggest political scandal in decades. The plaza is also associated with multi-millionaire Xu Ming, described by executives as Bo’s closest business ally, who is in detention as well. The contract he won during the construction of the plaza was the start of a relationship that authorities are now investigating as part of a wider probe into Bo’s business and political allies.
• Did Bo Guagua’s Beijing Ferrari ride really happen? « Sinostand
  Anonymous sources are a fact of life with government/embassy officials who aren’t officially authorized to comment. But I emailed Jeremy Page to see if he could give some clarity about the sources he based his report on. I asked  how many sources there were, who they’re affiliated with and if he approached them independently of one-another. Page sent a reply, not answering my questions but directing me to a Dow Jones (WSJ’s parent company) PR rep in New York. She simply said, “We don’t publicly discuss sources but we’re confident what we reported is true.”Jeremy Page is a very reputable reporter (whom I and several other journalists have recently said deserves a Pulitzer for his Bo coverage). There’s little reason to doubt that reliable sources did indeed give him the Ferrari information, but who are they? Why do their accounts conflict so greatly with the parties directly involved? The issue has serious implications, not only for the Bo family, but also in how the ruling elite and their offspring are viewed in China.

• Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai Family Connections – Graphic – NYTimes.com
• Bo Guagua Tries to Defuse Sports Car Scandal – NYTimes.com
  In an e-mail exchange on Wednesday, Abby Huntsman Livingston, a daughter of the former ambassador in question, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., gave her perspective on the Ferrari account, which was first reported in The Wall Street Journal but appeared to mystify the Huntsman family. She said her sister Mary Anne did share a ride with the younger Mr. Bo after dinner one night but did not notice the make of the car. Ms. Livingston added that she and a friend of Mr. Bo’s were also at the dinner that evening. “He was a very nice person,” she wrote. “I can’t confirm that a Ferrari was involved because I didn’t see it.” She did back up one thing Mr. Bo said: contrary to published accounts, he did not pick up her sister at the ambassador’s residence. “Not sure where the story originated from to be honest, nor does my family,” she wrote.

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