Analects
China
Anniversary of the Nanjing massacre
Ebbs and flows of history
Dec 13th 2012, 6:27 by T.P. | BEIJING
THERE are two times of year when crowds swell at the sombre and imposing memorial to victims of the violence carried out here in 1937 by Japanese troops. One is during April’s grave-sweeping holiday, when Chinese families honour deceased ancestors. The other is the period surrounding the December 13th anniversary of the start of the six-week rampage that killed an estimated 300,000 Chinese and is known to history as the Nanjing Massacre.
China is never shy about putting its history to political use when it seems expedient, and this year’s anniversary, the 75th, coming at an especially sensitive juncture in China’s ever tense relationship with Japan, is one of those times.
Public appearances
Fancy dress
Dec 11th 2012, 4:11 by J.J. | BEIJING
CHINESE author Mo Yan travelled last week to Sweden to collect the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature. The decision to give the award to Mr Mo (whose real name is Guan Moye; his pen name means “Does not Speak”) has not been without controversy. After the announcement of his triumph, Mr Mo came in for a round of criticism from fellow writers and intellectuals, including many who feel that he is too cosy with the Chinese government.
Self-immolation in Tibet
The burning issue
Dec 9th 2012, 3:18 by Banyan | SINGAPORE
YET again Tibetans have burnt themselves to death in protest at Chinese rule. According to a website produced by Tibetan exiles, Kunchok Phelgye, a 24-year-old monk, set himself on fire on December 8th, near Kirti monastery in the Chinese province of Sichuan. In a separate incident on the same day and in the same region, where this form of protest began in February 2009, Pema Dorjee, a 23-year-old, also lost his life. Since the first self-immolation, more than 90 Tibetans have followed suit. Most have done so to protest against Chinese rule, and to call for the return to Tibet of the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader.
The desperate protests are not petering out.
Microblogging and the world
Intweetable
Dec 2nd 2012, 14:06 by T.P. | BEIJING
OF THE 264 Twitter accounts belonging to governments and world leaders, and the 350,289 tweets that have been sent from those accounts to their 51,990,656 followers, not a single one was sent by a Chinese leader.
This information comes courtesy of a new report called Twiplomacy, which describes the ways in which governments use Twitter to brand their countries and to interact with important constituencies both at home and abroad. Issued by Burson-Marsteller, a big public-relations firm, the study reveals fascinating trends about the patterns of usage and inter-connections between heads of state around the world.
Literature of officialdom
The civil servant's novel
Dec 2nd 2012, 12:02 by C.S.M. | BEIJING
REGISTRATIONS for the civil-service exams reached a record high this year of about 1.4m, 20 times what they were a decade ago. The perquisites of life in the civil service make it look like a “golden rice bowl” to many. But in fact Chinese officialdom is something more like a poisoned chalice—or so says one of the country’s bestselling authors. His fiction exposes the self-serving corruption, greed and ferocious politicking that passes for life among China’s politicians and bureaucrats.
Wang Xiaofang is no stranger to Chinese politics. In the late 1990s, he served as private secretary to Ma Xiangdong, then the deputy mayor of Shenyang, a metropolis in the north-east.
Bogus media
Too sexy by far
Nov 28th 2012, 7:33 by G.E. | BEIJING
SOMETIMES China flexes its soft power without really having any idea it has done so. That appears to be what happened on November 27th when the People’s Daily Online, a website of the Communist Party’s English-language mouthpiece, reported on an article by the Onion, a satirical version of an American newspaper, declaring North Korea’s Kim Jong Un the “Sexiest Man Alive”. The report, complete with a gallery of 55 photographs of the North Korean dictator at work and play, quickly became an internet sensation.
Some wondered immediately whether a Chinese editor might have been in on the joke.
Parallel history
Times of intrigue and promise
Nov 15th 2012, 8:35 by J.J. | BEIJING
IN THE crisp autumn air of a November day in Beijing, a meeting of notables convened to anoint a new ruler. The previous administration had overseen a decade of reform including new policies that pushed economic and industrial development to unprecedented levels. Sweeping changes in education and growing prosperity, especially in the cities along China’s coastline, transformed society but had also unleashed new social forces that the government struggled to contain.
China reveals its new leaders
Habemus Papam!
Nov 15th 2012, 5:13 by T.P. | BEIJING
WITH ITS UNIQUE and mystifying blend of pageantry, ritual and secrecy, China’s ruling Communist Party Thursday morning revealed the identities of the seven officials it has chosen to lead the nation in the coming years.
Ending the tremendous suspense it has generated over the course of a politically tumultuous year, the party made public its newly selected Politburo Standing Committee by sending them striding, in order of seniority, across a red carpet and into the view of journalists and television cameras crowded into Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
Leading the pack was Xi Jinping, 59, the party’s new general secretary. This much was no surprise.
Congresses past
Recalling better days
Nov 13th 2012, 4:35 by J.M. | BEIJING
THE wooden choreography of the Chinese Communist Party’s 18th congress, now under way in Beijing, strikes Chinese and foreign observers alike as an oddity in a country that in many other ways is changing so fast. The ritual of the week-long event, from the stodgy report delivered by the general secretary on opening day (see our report, here) to the mind-numbing repetition of identical views by the more than 2,200 delegates, has hardly changed in decades.
Tibetan protest
The living picture of frustration
Nov 11th 2012, 8:26 by A.A. | TONGREN
DOLMA SQUARE, outside Rongwo monastery in Tongren, Qinghai province, generally feels empty in its hugeness, punctuated only by a golden stupa at its heart, and the occasional monk. On November 9th it was swarming with activity, as thousands of Tibetans, mostly students, demonstrated against ethnic injustices; an 18-year-old Tibetan, Kalsang Jinpa, had burnt himself to death there the day before.
This was the third self-immolation in the region in less than a week. On November 7th Tamdin Tso, a 23-year-old nomad, set himself on fire in a nearby township.
The National Congress commences
Age before beauty
Nov 8th 2012, 9:41 by T.P. | BEIJING
THE MONTHS LEADING leading up to today’s opening of the Chinese Communist Party’s 18th National Congress have been filled with uncertainty, anticipation and suspense. Moreover, at November 8th, this year’s Congress arrived at an unusually late date.
But the 2,270 delegates who gathered for the meeting in Beijing’s imposing Great Hall of the People were asked to wait just one moment-of-silence longer before getting down to business. This was so that heads might be bowed and respects paid to some dear, departed Communist leaders of the past. These included Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Verily, they are gone but not forgotten.
America-watching
Two countries, two systems
Nov 7th 2012, 3:52 by T.P. | BEIJING
IT’S NOT quite on the same scale as the planetary alignment heralded by some as the great “harmonic convergence”. But with an unusual alignment of political calendars in America and China, there sure is a lot of important politicking going on this week. A mere two days after Barack Obama’s victory in an acrimonious presidential election (one day, really, if you account for time zones), China will throw open the curtain on November 8th on the Communist Party’s 18th National Congress. This set-piece of political theatre marks the formal start of China’s once-a-decade leadership transition process.
Beijing before the Congress
Party planning
Nov 7th 2012, 2:11 by J.J. | BEIJING
LONG-TIME residents of Beijing anticipate major political events with the same mix of resignation and dread those in other parts of the world might a large storm or the inevitable visit of a particularly annoying relative. With the 18th Party Congress set to begin this Thursday, the fun begins anew.
As a recent op-ed in the Global Times puts it:
Any incidents taking place during such grand events don’t comply with traditional political culture. But this doesn’t mean Chinese politics cannot afford incidents.
Unrest in the cities
Middle-class blues
Oct 29th 2012, 18:52 by J.M. | BEIJING
IT MUST be worrying to China’s leadership that some of the largest outbreaks of urban unrest in recent years have occurred in some of the country’s most prosperous cities. The most recent example, in the port city of Ningbo, involved thousands of people facing off with riot police in a protest over plans to expand a chemical factory in the city. After three days of sometimes-violent demonstrations, the city government announced on October 28th that it was halting the project (as the Associated Press reports). For now at least, the protests appear to be subsiding.
China's ruling families
Torrent of scandal
Oct 26th 2012, 6:28 by J.M. | BEIJING
AT HIS first news conference as China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao introduced himself to reporters packed into a cavernous room in the Great Hall of the People (as well as to a live television audience) with an unusual reference to his own family history. Chinese leaders normally hide behind the smokescreen of “collective leadership”, downplaying their own attributes. But Mr Wen waxed lyrical about his own upbringing: “I am a very ordinary person. I come from a family of teachers in the countryside. My grandfather, my father and my mother were all teachers. My childhood was spent in the turmoil of war.
In this blog, our correspondents provide insights into news about China. News is to be construed broadly; politics, finance, geography, language, fine art—all are fair game, in no particular order. We chose the name, which means "things gathered up" or "literary fragments" (and alludes to the title of a Confucian classic), to that end.
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