Most Racist People in the World

Chinese people, of course.

The Farewell and China

I saw The Farewell with my parents in a theater. It was pretty good and I think my parents enjoyed it. I'm usually not into that Social Justice crap but it was good to see an Asian-American film do well in the box office.

However, I saw the following article in Inkstone, Inkstone publishes stories about China and is a part of South China Morning Post. The basic gist of the article is that the movie did not resonate with Mainland Chinese audiences, since they story was told from the Chinese-American perspective. I read the article and I was disappointed and disgusted. What's wrong with Mainland Chinese people (as presented in the article)? Not every movie has to be a Communist propaganda film, only showing China as a "perfect" society.

Jessica, a Chinese film editor based in Los Angeles, wrote on Douban that the Chinese-American director, Lulu Wang, portrayed the views of the Chinese-American characters as being more valid than their Chinese relatives.

“I was so upset after watching it. The director seems to think she is superior to Chinese people. Please do some research before you dump on Chinese people, don’t just put those stereotypes out there,” she wrote.

She told Inkstone by phone that the movie presented an unflattering view of China and perpetuated prejudice against Chinese culture. She refused to share her last name in fear of retaliation in the film industry.

I'm sorry, but that's f*cking pathetic. Chinese-Americans are not the same as Mainland Chinese. The culture and perspective on life is totally different. By comparing importance of cultural views, this Jessica is implying that the "Chinese relative's" perspective should be more important because after all, they are the "real" Chinese people. I felt this when I was in China. I felt like yelling, "I'm not like you. Stop putting your expectations on me." How am I supposed to speak fluent Chinese when I lived in America for 40+ years? I also see this cultural superiority online all the time. Probably due to Communist brainwashing, there's a lot of nationalist bullshit and Han superiority crap online. I think the Communist Party has screwed up Chinese culture in the past 70 years to further their personal political goals. I feel it's modern China that is out of step with the rest of the civilized world, where discrimination, genocide, and lack of privacy is seen as the norm.

So it's too bad that The Farewell won't do well in China, similar to Crazy Rich Asians. Mainland Chinese can't or won't look at Chinese culture with a critical eye, maybe because they will be seen as not "patriotic" enough.

Qing James

Ugh. LeBron James, possibly the greatest basketball player of all time, has sold out to the Chinese communist party. When asked about the controversy over Daryl Morey's tweet about Hong Kong, Le Bron basically put money before free speech and democracy.

NPR

He could have just said nothing but that would maybe jeopardize his merchandising revenue in China. There's been a huge backlash in the US regarding his comments, and rightly so. I think a lot of the outrage comes from his past efforts to portray himself as some kind of social justice warrior, speaking out about injustice and supporting charitable causes. Now it looks like it was all fake. LeBron should have taken a lesson from Michael Jordan: be an asshole all the time so expectations are low.

-Injustice Anywhere Is A Threat To Justice Everywhere- Our Lives Begin To End The Day We Become Silent About Things That Matter- #ThankYouMLK50

-LeBron James (Twitter), 2018

Pathetic.

Social Credit

Wall Street Journal

More than three dozen local governments across China are beginning to compile digital records of social and financial behavior to rate creditworthiness. A person can incur black marks for infractions such as fare cheating, jaywalking and violating family-planning rules. The effort echoes the dang’an, a system of dossiers the Communist party keeps on urban workers’ behavior.

In time, Beijing expects to draw on bigger, combined data pools, including a person’s internet activity, according to interviews with some architects of the system and a review of government documents. Algorithms would use a range of data to calculate a citizen’s rating, which would then be used to determine all manner of activities, such as who gets loans, or faster treatment at government offices or access to luxury hotels.

When I first heard this, I though it was either "fake news" or a joke. It seems like an incredible intrusion of privacy but I guess no such thing exists in China. In the end, it's another tool for the CCP to control the population and stay in power. Why would anyone (Taiwan) want to live under such a system?

"Freedom of Religion"

Shameful

Christian Science Monitor

In 'China's Jerusalem,' party members must now profess atheism

A Communist Party crackdown takes a new turn in a religious hotbed of faith on China's east coast. Prospective party members who worship need to officially 'rectify' their beliefs.

As with many things in China, laws don't mean shit. It's just used as political cover—for whichever faction of the CCP currently in power—to do whatever they want against their "enemies." Is it surprising that none of Xi Jinping's cronies are "corrupt"? They'd better start buying houses in Arcadia before his term in office is up.

The Global Times quoted a professor from a prominent party college in Beijing that gave an interpretation of the latest move:

"Party members are banned from joining religions. Believing in communism and atheism is a basic requirement to become a Party member." said Li Yunlong, a professor at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee. Li said that Zhejiang authorities stressed this basic requirement due to local situation, adding he hopes this will set an example to other provinces. "This could be a part of efforts against the penetration of Western hostile forces," said Li.

Wait, Western hostile forces.... is he talking about Marx and Lenin?

Driving Under Intravenous

ChinaHush

Police pulled over a Jiangsu man for driving while attached to an intravenous drip on April 30, according to CCTV news.

Gang Fang was apparently traveling on a highway in Jiangsu province—located in east China—with a bag of fluid sticking from his sunroof, and a tube leading to his arm that Wednesday afternoon.

Gang told police that earlier that day he visited a hospital due to stress. Doctors told him to lie down, and take time off work, but the 38-year-old complained he didn’t have time. Attendants then gave him energy in the form of a drip, but the businessman still didn’t have time to wait in the hospital—he snuck over to his car, placed the bag on a stand behind his front seat, and poked the fluid from his sunroof.

Police then pulled him over for dangerous driving.

“I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong,” a witness overheard him say.

Gang now faces a driving ban, and a summons for dangerous driving. Motorists who travel while attached to a drip are apparently four times more likely to be involved in an accident than those who drive drunk, according to CCTV News.

“This is incredibly dangerous,” a police spokesperson said. “Not only was he taking medicines that could have affected his driving directly into a vein, he was unable to steer properly because he would have ripped the tube out.”

Dangerous driving? He was getting "energy in the form of a drip" which is what, like drinking a Red Bull? I'm pretty sure it's just a glucose solution. Do they have laws against driving with an intravenous drip in your hand?

Also, the story mentioned that "motorists who travel while attached to a drip are apparently four times more likely to be involved in an accident than those who drive drunk." Four times! Do they have actual statistics or is CCTV reporting BS again? How many intravenous accidents would you need to determine a statistic like that?

CCTV on YouTube?!

Yup.

I found out about it from Twitter.

Funny how both sites are blocked in China by the Great FireWall.

Illegal Church Building

The Telegraph

In an episode that underlines the fierce and long-standing friction between China's officially atheist Communist Party and its rapidly growing Christian congregation, Bible-carrying believers this week flocked to the Sanjiang church in Wenzhou hoping to protect it from the bulldozers.

Their 24-hour guard began earlier this week when a demolition notice was plastered onto the newly-constructed church which worshippers say cost around 30 million yuan (£2.91 million) and almost six years to build.

Officials claimed the church had been built illegally and used red paint to daub the words: "Demolish" and "Illegal construction" onto its towering facade.

How is this possible? The church building is massive. Did the city officials not notice this huge $5 million building for the past six year?!

More likely scenarios:

1. City officials decided church did not pay enough construction bribes
2. Church did not want to pay "tax" or percentage of offering to city officials
3. Someone from church criticized the provincial party chief's mistress or something

How are they going to knock the building down anyway? Bulldozers probably won't work...

Province of China

This is from the settings page of the QuizUp app. I wonder if they got a lot of complaints from Taiwanese people because the text changed during the last update.

Before/After

Hopefully this won't prompt a bunch of mainlanders complaining about how Taiwan is a province of China, blah, blah, blah.

I've also wondered about this before. Why does the average mainlander give a shit whether Taiwan is independent or not. It doesn't make any difference in their lives. Is it a case of misery loves company? Or are they trying to impress the Internet censors so they get brownie points with the party? Disgusting either way.

只想知道这个姑娘是谁

Looking through my Weibo account today, I saw this post with the above photo attached. I'm 99% positive that it's Kang Minkyung (강민경/姜敏京), one of the two members of Davichi (다비치), a K-pop duo.

The post itself had nothing to do (I think) with the photo; maybe the poster is using it to attract views. One of the comments asked "只想知道这个姑娘是谁" or "just wanted to know who is the girl" so I made my first Weibo reply: 姜敏京. Funny, I never thought I would be schooling Chinese people about K-pop, especially on Weibo.

Former nationality(ies)

A tweet led me to a blogpost about a new Chinese (PRC) visa application (V.2013). I haven't applied for a Chinese visa for several years and was surprised to see it is now 4 pages (PDF).



One the first page, question 1.7 asks you to fill in your 曾有国籍 or former nationality(ies). I guess if I had to fill out this form now, I would write Canada in the box, but not sure how to continue. Do I write Taiwan? China? Republic of China?! Question 1.8 then asks for your 出生地点(市、省/州、国) place of birth (city, province/state, country). Again, do I put "Taipei, Taiwan, China" or go for broke and put Republic of China for country?

For my dad, this becomes even more confusing. He was born in Chengdu, China in 1941. Since the People's Republic of China didn't exist until 1941, it was definitely 中華民國 or Republic of China. He has a passport issued by Taiwan but nothing from PRC. I'm pretty certain if either of us put Taiwan or Republic of China for country or nationality, our visa application will be rejected.

BTW, if you google "Republic of China" you will get the on the results page:



It clearly states the Taiwan is a country, a "state in East Asia", and the "first constitutional republic in Asia." Heh, Google in going to stay on China's shit-list for a long long time.

ChinaJoy

Speaking of China, I signed up for a Sina Weibo account recently and have been checking it once in awhile to see if it's still there. I posted a few things that may be censor-able but I only have 11 followers so no one seems to care. Anyway, I think Weibo signed me up to follow some random people (Edison Chen?!) and one appeared to be a photographer. Well, it seems all "model" photographers and trade show booth babes are in Shanghai this week for ChinaJoy 2013. I think it's a mobile gaming trade show but it just looks like a lot of T&A and cosplay.

I found this collage on a Weibo feed. Some of the girls are cute but others look weird in a plasticky way. Real question is how many are moonlighting as mistresses for some corrupt CCP government official or business owner.

If Mr. Anon Y. Mous would like more, I can find some better pics.

沒辦法

沒辦法 (Traditional characters) literally means "no way to do" and is heard a lot in China, normally when you ask someone to do something they should be doing anyway. In reality, it just means that the person saying 沒辦法 is too lazy or wants a kickback.

There's an article in The Nanfang about zoo patron abusing animals at the Shenzhen zoo:

Zoos are supposed to be designed to protect people from animals, but sometimes they need to work the other way around.

Only two crocodiles are left alive of over a dozen that were placed in Rural Grand View Garden, a zoo in Shenzhen’s Guangming New Zone, Shenzhen Evening News reports. The cause of their death? Visitors throwing stones at them and polluting their habitat with garbage.

Visitors, particularly children, have been unimpressed by the hibernating beasts.
A journalist who visited the zoo this week reported that, as crocodiles hibernate during the winter, a lot of visitors have been shouting, spitting and throwing things at them to make sure they are alive.

Because the manmade lake in which they lived was full of garbage thrown by visitors, staff from the zoo went in to clean it this week but discovered that only two were still alive.

The zoo has issued warnings about such behaviour but staff say they have little power to stop it, for some reason.

I can just hear the chorus of 沒辦法s being said at all levels of zoo management. This is stupid. The answer is very simple... kick out anyone caught throwing crap at animals. No appeals, no refunds. When I go to the San Diego Zoo, I don't throw stuff at the animals. First, it a horribly wrong thing to do, but I also know that I'll get called out by other zoo patrons or forcibly ejected from the zoo.

I've only been to the Chengdu zoo and thankfully I didn't see dead animal exhibits.

Jackie Chan is Pro-democracy?

Not really...

chinaSMACK

@南方都市报:

Jackie Chan: Hong Kong Criticizes and Demonstrates About Everything, Should Be Restricted

During an exclusive interview with Southern People Weekly, Jackie Chan said that Hong Kong had become a city of parades [demonstrations]. “Protesting China, protesting the leaders, protesting everything, demonstrating about everything. There should be regulations on what can be demonstrated against and what can’t be demonstrated against.” “We have returned to China now, how can we still be criticizing Chinese leaders all the time? Whoever amongst you has what it takes can come govern, but you guys don’t have it in you, and all you do is criticize.”

Hmm... I criticize the CCP a lot. I also think I have what it takes to govern China... so where do I sign up? Do I join/form a party? How do I get my name on the election ballot?

Wait... this is China and there are no elections. There is only an authoritarian dictatorship that crushes all opposition, even benign protests.

I agree with some commentators: Jackie Chan should shut up and retire. I don't like any of his movies anyway.

All Propaganda, All The Time

Go Chengdoo

A Swedish man is being heralded by local media as a hero and "foreign Lei Feng" after he rescued a drowning woman from the Jinjiang River.

Witnesses say that a crowd had gathered around near the Jinjiang Bridge after a person was spotted in the river at around 10 at night on December 6.

Not long after, a man emerged from the crowd, tore off his coat, and ran into the river. He swam about 10 meters before he was able to grab a hold of the woman.

Props to the Swedish guy but everything about the story is super lame.

1. How long was she in the water? There seems to be quite a crowd in the video, including a guy wearing a Police jacket, but they're all just standing around... probably all taking pictures with their phones.

2. Foreign Lei Feng?! I think that's an insult. Why not call him a hero and leave it at that? Why always focus on the "foreigner" part? In the video, the first thing someone says when he rescues the woman is not "are you okay?" or "is she still breathing?" but "HE'S A LAOWAI!!!" Also, Lei Feng is a total fabrication by the communist party; calling him "foreign Lei Feng" is a feeble attempt to link his heroism with the CCP.

3. Swimming lessons should be mandatory. Watching swimming competition on TV is not the same thing.


Does he know how to swim?

"Censorship Is Necessary"

Surprise! Commie party member thinks censorship is necessary, compares it to airport security checks.

Associated Press

This year's Nobel Prize in literature winner, Mo Yan, who has been criticized for his membership in China's Communist Party and reluctance to speak out against the country's government, defended censorship Thursday as something as necessary as airport security checks.

He also suggested he won't join an appeal calling for the release of the jailed 2010 Peace Prize laureate, Liu Xiaobo, a fellow writer and compatriot.

Mo has been criticized by human rights activists for not being a more outspoken defender of freedom of speech and for supporting the Communist Party-backed writers' association, of which he is vice president.

What a total disgrace. The article says he is spending several days in Stockholm, presumably for sightseeing, while Liu Xiaobo is in jail for 11 years.

Chinese "Secrecy" Laws

Reuters

Regulators on Monday charged the Chinese arms of five top accounting firms with securities violations over their refusal to produce certain audit papers for U.S.-listed Chinese companies.

The Securities and Exchange Commission began proceedings against the Chinese affiliates of Deloitte, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, BDO and Ernst & Young. It was the SEC's widest enforcement effort yet to procure documents in connection with probes of possible accounting fraud of U.S.-listed Chinese companies, and raised questions about whether talks have stalled between the U.S. and Chinese governments to resolve the issue.

The SEC said it has been seeking documents related to investigations of possible wrongdoing at nine China-based companies. Chinese secrecy laws have stymied efforts to obtain audit documents that investigators need to determine whether there were accounting irregularities.

I don't understand why there is an issue. If Chinese companies want to be listed on US stock exchanges and attract US investors, then they need to follow US laws on disclosure. If they can't or won't, then they should go find another exchange to list their stock. With China's pervasive corruption, there's no way I would invest in any Chinese company unless they submit to an US audit. Even then, a friend working in Deloitte China has told me about fake invoices, fake purchase orders, fake contracts... even fake bank statements with official red stamps.

The whole Chinese secrecy law excuse is crap too. Laws are not enforced in China... it's just a tool for the CCP to do whatever they want. They can easily release financial documents for audit. The only reason the documents are "secret" is because they're hiding outright fraud or documents corruption by government officials.

I say delist all these companies, especially those that got listed through the "reverse merger" backdoor.

Kim Il-sung University

Just read the bio of Zhang Dejiang, one of the presumed members of the next 9-member Politburo that will run China. It was fairly typical of CCP leaders: restricting of news about SARS breakout, suppression of protests and news reporting, etc. This tidbit caught my eye though:

Zhang, a native of Tai'an in Liaoning, attended Yanbian University, where he studied the Korean language. Zhang enrolled in Kim Il-sung University in North Korea in August 1978 and received a degree in economics in 1980. Zhang's degree in economics makes him something of a rarity among the Chinese leadership. His connections to North Korea and his handling of illegal immigration from that country as a local official in Jilin are believed to be key factors in his rise to power.

Degree in Economics from Kim Il-sung University in North Korea?! What could he possibly learn about economics in North Korea? How to screw up a country so bad that most of your citizens are starving? Juche? It's so ludicrous that I tried to come up with an analogy for hours but could not.

4 More Years of Wealth Redistribution

Crap. Well, at least I don't live in China. This has to be a bad translation... or the most incoherent article I've ever read.

Be wary of populism led by democracy

Results of the US presidential election will be made public today. No matter who wins, Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, there's no expectation either domestically or externally that US policies will dramatically change. The problems in the US will remain.

The election has just been about getting votes, and this is gradually becoming a popular political rule throughout the world. Politicians should try their best to please the voters and make various promises. The demands of voters will continue to increase, while their patience for setbacks grows weaker.

The electoral system encourages populism. Parties and politicians are slowly turned into its captives.

Viewed from the literal meaning of the phrase "civil rights," this evolution in the political system is correct.

The outcome of carrying civil rights to their extreme is to maximize everyone's benefits.

The concepts of effort and hard work will become outdated. The overall progress of the country has become an issue of secondary importance.

This is a worldwide phenomenon. China will also be affected, even though its political system is not the same as the West's. China once attached great importance to efficiency. The impact brought about by populism may affect this.

However, Western governments have given up their responsibility to lead society and now only shuffle voters and votes.

This should alarm Chinese society. The spirit of hard work and effort must not be replaced by unrealistic welfarism.

China's general situation is far less well-developed than that of the US.

However, many people in the world are optimistic about China. This is because they trust in the continuity of Chinese policies and China's social governance capabilities. They believe that China's system can overcome difficulties and promote the development of the country.

There's no perfect political system. However, China's current system is widely considered to be an effective one. The efficiency of this system is both outstanding and rare.

The most precious thing in the world is development. Some people think that happiness is more important than development.

However, without development, the economy will deteriorate. Then what happiness can there be?

Fairness is also very important. However, only when the joint development of both the economy and society has been achieved, can fairness be ensured.

China has already experienced the old days, when there was a low standard of fairness. But now, who wants to go back to that time?

A real understanding of the US presidential elections is extremely important to Chinese society. It can broaden our horizons.

We can also heed warnings from their examples. Modern Chinese society should be able to discern the truth. China's rise is already an unstoppable trend and it is halfway through this path.

Difficulties can be found on all paths. What we should overcome is our own difficulties. Our determination and confidence will be more firm once we have overthrown illusions.

Cyber Attacks

I got an email from the information security guy at work saying that we've been experiencing a lot of cyber attacks on our network, and that we need to change our network login password.

This was then followed 3 minutes later by a reply-all from our CEO suggesting that a state actor is possibly behind the attacks. Hmm... China? Russia? North Korea?