China Daily Digest: Mon Dec 28

• New regulations are meant to increase use of green energy. [WSJ]
• China will maintain steady currency policy. [NY Times]
• Mine explosion kills more than a dozen. [AP via Yahoo!]
• Democracy dissident Liu Xiaobo gets 11 years in prison. [SCMP]
• Tomb of famous general of antiquity may have been unearthed. [Reuters]
• Hijacked ship safe. (Did China pay a ransom?) [People's Daily, SCMP]

Japan to film adult version of Chinese adult novel

‘The Plum in the Golden Vase,’ is a highly regarded Ming dynasty Chinese novel dripping with sexuality; the most recent film adaptation of the novel will be called “The Forbidden Legend of Sex and Chopsticks.”

In other news, a man from the city of Wenzhou beat a pregnant woman over an ice cream cone.

China Daily Digest Dec 24th 2009

1. Christmas Guilt: US says jailing dissident ‘uncharacteristic of a great country‘ during high profile trial of dissident Liu Xiaobo, which China blocked diplomats from entering (AP via Yahoo)

2. Learning from the Past: China’s Central Bank plans to study risk oversight to prevent an American-style financial meltdown (Businessweek)

3. Massive Loan Splurge and Rise of Snooker: Predictions for 2010 (The Guardian)

4 Shot Down. : China microblogging service “The People’s Microblog” hacked the day it launched; it’s now shut down (PC World)

5.  For Christmas in China this Year: Kitsch (Danwei)

China Daily Digest: Wed Dec 23rd

• No Singing: Police close a karaoke bar for copyright infringement. (Meanwhile, U.S. thinks piracy still too high.) [Xinhua, AFP via Google]

• No Smut: Most on China’s crusade to snuff out online porn. [WSJ China Real Time Report]

• Swift Punishment: The trial of democracy dissident Liu Xiaobo is expected to last two days. (Find out more about Liu’s lawyers.) [AP via Yahoo!, NY Times]

• Safety Net: China reforms its pension system. [The Beijing News via Danwei]

• Rare Meat: A man is jailed for eating what might have been the last wild Indochinese tiger. (BBC)

China Daily Digest Dec 22nd 2009

1. Music to America’s Ears: WTO declares that foreign companies can sell certain media content directly to Chinese consumers (Financial Times)

2.   How Many Boxes of Girl Scout Cookies? China’s sovereign wealth fund might receive another USD 200 billion to invest (Wall Street Journal China Real Time Report)

3.You Are Either With Us or Against Us:Cambodia earns USD 1.2 billion in grants and loans after it repatriates 20 convicted Chinese Uyghrs  (The New York Times)

4. Magic Number 8: China aims for around 8 percent growth in 2010 (AFP via Yahoo)

5.  No Ice Cream for You! Blogger blocked from photographing a Häägen Däzs in Shanghai (Shanghai Scrap)

China Daily Digest: Mon Dec 21

• Macau marks 10 years since the handover. [CCTV]

• Chinese Vice-Premier Xi Jinping wraps up his Asian tour with a visit to Myanmar. [People's Daily]

• China stands behind, and is blamed for, the Copenhagen Accord. [AP via Yahoo!, The Guardian)

• Cambodia deports Uighur refugees back to China. [Reuters]

• Dogs as status symbols in China. [USA Today]

China Daily’s Bill Cosby Impression

As a festive wrap-up to 2009, China Daily posted the “Top 10 Darndest Things Officials Said“ during the year. All were relatively low level officials, and all of the quotes received media coverage and blog chatter when uttered. It’s interesting both as a roundup of hot button social issues during the year and how it reveals who’s allowed to be criticized and why.

Overlooked Story of the Week: Debtors’ Prison

In 19th century England, owing money could get you thrown in jail (so could being indigent).

This week, China announced it be taking a hard line to credit-card related crimes.

Here’s a excerpt from the wire story:

BEIJING, Dec. 15 (Xinhua) — China has announced detailed punishment standards against credit card related crimes in a bid to fight “increasingly rampant” frauds, officials said on Tuesday.

…

Offenders could face more than 10 years in jail or even life imprisonment, as well as a fine as high as 500,000 yuan (73,200 U.S. dollars), if a case involves more than 25 fake credit cards, according to the legal document, which will become effective on Wednesday.

Card users could be charged if he or she intentionally delays the payment three months after the second notice of card-issuing bank arrives.

The law apparently states that a “malicious overdraft” can be a criminal offense.

From the SCMP:

Beijing resident Xiao Wang, 22, was the first credit card user subject to this charge last year in Beijing’s Xicheng District Court, a report in the Beijing Evening News said.

In September 2006, he bought a mobile phone with his newly approved credit card, and also used the card to withdraw 5,000 yuan (HK$5,700) in cash. Shortly afterwards he lost his job, and thought it was acceptable to delay payment until he had money again. The court ruled that he had showed malicious intent, and gave him a six-month jail term suspended for a year, and fined him 20,000 yuan – the total amount of his overdraft plus interest plus a 9,000 yuan penalty.

We’ve learned that even the threat of bankruptcy did nothing to stop millions of Americans from borrowing sums they couldn’t pay back, and banks from lending the money. So perhaps one way to deter the irrational exuberance of having a credit card would be to threaten jail time for anybody who treats it as a joke.

Still, from a Western perspective it seems unduly harsh, as well as insensitive — a bit like “temporary rape.” Those arguing that China is recapitulating the history of Western development probably didn’t see debtors’ prisons in their crystal balls.

China Daily Digest December 18th, 2009

1.  Can it Succeed? Uncertainties loom over Copenhagen (The New York Times)

2. I Sing the Body Electric: Western companies compete for Chinese grid money (Businessweek)

3. Currency Wars: No sign of resolution on whether China will devalue its currency (The Economist)

4. Young Pioneer: One of China’s earliest bloggers talks about the history of the genre (Deutsche Welle)

5. Red Christmas: Small city Liuzhou cancels the holiday for lack of foreigners (Liuzhou Laowai)

China: the Ideal spot for social networking

Many factors combine to make China the sweetspot for social networking. Because of state control and decades of poverty, traditional electronic media didn’t take root like it did elsewhere in the world. TV caters mostly to the unwashed masses. Video game consoles never took of in China because piracy destroyed the market for the lucrative part of console sales, namely, the games. Thus Chinese consumers go online to get their TV and video game fix. Gaming is a social experience, and companies like Tencent and Netease have done wonderful jobs in building online environments for kids to play games.

China is also one of the only countries in the world where people claim to have more friends online than off. Because of the state-controlled nature of official media, people sometimes trust an anonymous stranger more than a magazine with a clear party-dictated agenda.