China Companies Rank Lowest in Survey of Transparency Reporting. Chinese companies ranked the lowest in a survey of public reporting practices in emerging markets, underscoring concern that the government’s anti-corruption campaign may not take root in the corporate sector. The 33 Chinese multinationals surveyed averaged a score of 2 out of 10 points in Berlin-based Transparency International’s “Transparency in Corporate Reporting” survey, released yesterday.
Chery Automobile Co., the closely held carmaker based in Wuhu, China, joined one other company among the 100 surveyed with a score of zero across the three categories measured. The report draws attention to a Chinese business environment that’s ripe for corruption because of minimal public-reporting requirements. Leaders of the ruling Communist Party have warned that corruption threatens their grip on power and have announced anti-graft investigations of a number of officials in recent months. Companies from India fared the best, with Tata Communications Ltd. leading the list with a score of 7.1. How young women in China become mistresses – James Palmer. Shanshan’s $550 shoes came from her lover, but the soles of her feet, as hard as leather, came from her childhood. ‘We used to play barefoot in the village,’ she told me.
‘All the girls in the karaoke bar had feet like this.’ At 26, Shanshan has come a long way from rural Sichuan, one of China’s poorer southern provinces, famous for the ‘spiciness’ of its food and its women. Today her lover, Mr Wu, keeps her in a Beijing apartment that ‘cost 2.5 million yuan ($410,000)’, and visits whenever he can find the time away from his wife. In his late 40s, and an official with a massive state-run oil company, he was recently in Africa for six months developing an oilfield.
Shanshan got bored and decided to improve her scant English by finding a ‘language-exchange partner’ online, which is how she and I became friends this spring. Shanshan never referred to Wu as her boyfriend; he was her ‘man’, her ‘lover’, and occasionally her ‘uncle’. Keeping a woman is common among powerful Chinese men. Timeline: Zhou Yongkang's life and career. Zhou Yongkang, who retired last year from the Chinese Communist Party’s supreme decision making body, is facing an investigation on charges of corruption.
The decision to carry out the highest-level corruption investigation in recent Chinese history was made at the Communist Party’s annual summer retreat in Beidaihe near Tianjin earlier this month, sources close to the Chinese government have told the South China Morning Post. The sources confirm long-standing rumours that Zhou’s downfall was imminent. The former member of the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee with a cadre family background was a key ally of disgraced former Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai who also has red pedigree. Bo’s trial on charges of corruption, embezzlement and abuse of power concluded earlier this week in Jinan, Shandong province. Sources tell the Post that Zhou’s downfall was not politically motivated and only remotely related to Bo’s fate.
View a full-screen version of the timeline. Bo Xilai told trial he had orders from the top to deal with Chongqing police chief. Bo Xilai claimed at his trial last week that he received orders from a law and order committee headed by China's former top policeman, Zhou Yongkang, on how to deal with the defection of the Chongqing police chief, say people with knowledge of the proceedings. Bo's words to the court last week are the first direct evidence linking him to Zhou, himself now the subject of a party investigation for corruption. A prosecution statement about the matter - first redacted, then removed from the official trial transcript - suggests Zhou was at least in contact with Bo about his handling of Wang Lijun's defection to the US consulate in Chengdu in February last year.
That incident brought down Bo, then Chongqing party secretary, and triggered China's biggest political scandal in decades. At the time, Zhou was head of the Communist Party's Central Commission for Political and Legal Affairs. The commission oversees the nation's courts, prosecutors and the police. He added that he missed his sons. Political Staging in Trial of Fallen China Official. Bo Guagua’s Statement. China’s New Leadership Takes Hard Line in Secret Memo. Jason Lee/Reuters Internal warnings show that President Xi Jinping fears that the Communist Party is vulnerable to public anger about corruption and challenges from liberals impatient for political change. These seven perils were enumerated in a memo, referred to as Document No. 9, that bears the unmistakable imprimatur of Xi Jinping, China’s new top leader.
The first was “Western constitutional democracy”; others included promoting “universal values” of human rights, Western-inspired notions of media independence and civic participation, ardently pro-market “neo-liberalism,” and “nihilist” criticisms of the party’s traumatic past. Even as Mr. Xi has sought to prepare some reforms to expose China’s economy to stronger market forces, he has undertaken a “mass line” campaign to enforce party authority that goes beyond the party’s periodic calls for discipline.
The internal warnings to cadres show that Mr. The warnings were not idle. Mr. Mr. The campaign carries some risks for Mr. China business offers big risk, bigger reward - Aug. 12, 2013. Jason Misium discusses the merits of a Western-style education with Chinese parents. HONG KONG (CNNMoney) Six months later, his tutoring service was offering Chinese students a "Western-style" education but the process of getting started was typical of the regulatory hassle, convoluted rules and other pitfalls entrepreneurs face in China.
In order to incorporate Sophos Academic Group, Misium had to prove he had office space and a commercial address -- and that meant significant upfront investment, with no guarantee of approval. To Misium, a young entrepreneur, it seemed a bit backwards. It "kind of tripped us up," he said. Misium's experience is not unusual for budding businesses looking to capitalize on China's growing middle class. Related: Big retailer finds China tough And in a country where laws and rules change frequently, sometimes with little notice, foreign companies can quickly find themselves in trouble. Finding the right partners Training and oversight The long run. Rozlyn Comics: Bollywood’s First Move into Porn Cartoons? (NSFW) Note: The images below might not be safe for work (NSFW). NextBigWhat reports today that photo model and Bollywood actress Rozlyn Khan (pictured right) is starring in an online adult toon comic strip titled Rozlyn Comics.
The racy web-based comic strip, which was launched on Sunday, could perhaps be Bollywood’s first association with a porn cartoon, something that the Indian government must dislike as both production and distribution of porn materials are illegal in the nation. The creator of the strip is Puneet Agarwal, aka Deshmukh. He’s an infamous figure in India who created what people hail as India’s first porn star in the form of Savita Bhabhi in a comic strip in 2008. The strips got a lot of eyeballs and the Indian government decided to ban it the following year 1. Deshmukh continues to create the Savita Bhabhi comic series, and he even released the movie version of it in May.
Though it is okay to consume smut it is illegal to produce and distribute such material in India. Why China Doesn't Produce Disruptive Technologies...Yet. I’ve been thinking about China’s political system for the past few days, since I watched this TED Talk by Shanghai VC Eric X. Li (who, for the record, I think is full of crap). Li’s argument is far too tangential to technology to discuss here, but it has caused me to reflect on the ways in which China’s political system affects its technology sector. And I think that China’s biggest disadvantage in the global technology game may be that its system discourages disruptive technology.
Although China has shifted from a socialist economy to a capitalist one over the past three decades, vestiges of the old system still remain. Whole industries — including the internet and telecom industry — are totally dominated by massive-state owned companies run by government bureaucrats. The problem with this, of course, is that the state both owns these companies and sets the policies that regulate their industries. Perhaps the best recent example of this is China’s online train ticket sales platform. Innovation and Disruption, and Why China Needs the Latter. Last Friday, I wrote an article about why China doesn’t produce many disruptive technologies, in which I argued that China’s political system is biased towards maintaining the status quo in industries like internet and telecommunications, where state-owned firms dominate. In response, I got a lot of arguments like this: That’s misleading. The real reason China doesn’t innovate is that it doesn’t have a mature enough (or risk-taking enough) investment environment or strong enough IP laws, so big new ideas often can’t get the funding and protection they need to grow and thrive.
That’s all very true, but innovativeness and disruptiveness are not the same thing. And especially in China, where foreign players are often shut out of the market either by legislation or by the formidable language and culture barriers, a product does not need to be innovative at all to be highly disruptive. Let’s steal an example from my original post and talk about WeChat. You’ll never be Chinese. Why I’m leaving the country I loved. Mark Kitto and family; Photo: Eric Leleu Death and taxes. You know how the saying goes. I’d like to add a third certainty: you’ll never become Chinese, no matter how hard you try, or want to, or think you ought to. I won’t be rushing back either.
Don’t you think, with all the growth and infrastructure, the material wealth, let alone saving the world like some kind of financial whizz James Bond, that China would be a happier and healthier country? When I arrived in Beijing for the second year of my Chinese degree course, from London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), China was communist. We had the time of our lives, as students do, but it isn’t the pranks and adventures I remember most fondly, not from my current viewpoint, the top of a mountain called Moganshan, 100 miles west of Shanghai, where I have lived for the past seven years. If I had to choose one word to describe China in the mid-1980s it would be optimistic.
A Briton’s Bitter Farewell to China Echoes Loudly. China’s New Leadership Has Ties to Tiananmen Era. Agence France-Presse Student protesters faced police officers in Tiananmen Square in April 1989 while grieving for Hu Yaobang, a former Communist Party leader and liberal whose death set off the protests. It was April 1989, and after a decade of economic transformation, China faced a clamor for political liberalization. Days later, protests erupted in Tiananmen Square, and the lives of those at the meeting took radically different turns. Several are now national leaders, including Li Keqiang, China’s prime minister. Others ended up in prison or exile, accused of supporting the demonstrations that shook the Communist Party and ended with soldiers sweeping through the city on June 4, shooting dead hundreds of unarmed protesters and bystanders.
“The atmosphere at the meeting was to let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend,” said Chen Yizi, who helped organize the conference. Connected China web application designed for iPad. Connected China is our collaborative project with Thomson Reuters. Built for the iPad as an HTML5 application, and available on the Web, Connected China uses a custom database to explore the cultural and political factors that shape the dynamics of power in modern China. The topic of Chinese leadership has never been more timely.
China’s rapid rise in global prominence over the last decade has been well chronicled. In March 2013, the country completed a leadership shift that only occurs once every five years. Yet China and its inner workings are still quite a mystery to Western audiences. Connected China delves into the data to provide new perspectives and provocative insights about power dynamics in modern China. Power in China is all about connections, both political and personal. The country’s formal political structure is complex—and also misleading. There are distinct patterns to successful careers. Connected China offers a multifaceted approach to understanding modern China. Winners and losers in China’s next decade. It is not enough for global businesses to know that in coming years China’s economy will move away from an overreliance on investment and toward more consumption. They also must know that the potential costs and benefits of rebalancing the world’s second-largest economy are high and will affect industries not only domestically but also around the world.
The degree of impact depends largely on the policies that Beijing chooses to implement. While China’s leadership—under both President Xi Jinping and his predecessor, Hu Jintao—has made it clear that it understands the risks of rebalancing, the process won’t be easy. Companies must be ready. The reason for rebalancing is obvious. The sharp increases in investment that have driven China’s rapid economic growth for the past 30 years are not sustainable, and consumers can’t provide additional demand unless wealth is redistributed toward Chinese households. 1. 2. 3. 4. Chinese Startups Need to Get Out of Beijing. Beijing’s air: Think of the kids (Image: Alamy / Guardian) You’re an entrepreneur or working for a startup.
You’re young. You’re about to have a family that you want to bring up in a nice, safe place. But you don’t have much money. Beijing ranked 74th among Chinese cities in terms of livability and 119th in terms of the freshness of its environment. The capital adds to the woes of a young entrepreneur with a mandated car license plate lottery that makes it difficult to get your first ever car on the road. Think local The alternative to all that lies in China’s smaller “second-tier” cities where the population is just a third or a quarter that of Beijing and Shanghai, and where property costs are half (or lower) than the nation’s top cities. These cities – such as Hangzhou, Chengdu, Xiamen – also have business environments that rival Beijing. While Pinguo didn’t get it that easy, such smaller cities are now more receptive to entrepreneurial web firms. Bye Bye Beijing. No Supper for You! Ai Weiwei Goes Heavy Metal. Look, Ai Weiwei’s been through hell. But that doesn’t mean he needs to put the rest of us through it.
And yet, here we are — “ Dumbass ” has arrived. In terms of metal, Ai Weiwei, in one song, has become the Billy Ray Cyrus of the genre. Billy Ray is about as country as Pat Boone was heavy metal. In a track that stylistically recalls a Def Leppard B-side that wouldn’t have made it past Joe Elliott ‘s coke dealer, Ai warbles and wails his way through five minutes of tepid, sugary metal — although the warbles and wails are the one thing about this mess that works. Heavy metal is about power, be it sexual, personal, cultural, or political.
Using video clichés leftover from ’80s hair metal (prison guards and food, hot chicks, sex doll comedy, cinematic shaving, lipstick) to achieve his goal of depicting the terror of being in a Chinese prison, Ai ends up conveying the feelings of 16-year-old kids the world over: my parents don’t understand me, and now I’m grounded. Chinese State Media: 60% of Consumers Are Starting To Think Apple Sucks. China Names Porn Offenders That Should be Shut Down, Apple’s App Store Included. Chinese Law Proposes Real Name Registration for All Phone and Mobile Networks. Is Foxconn Firing Suicidal Employees? Worker Claims He Was Fired Over Suicide Misunderstanding. Tencent's WeChat Has 40 Million Overseas Users. China’s Youth: Do They Dare to Care about Politics? Case of Suspended Editor Draws Interest Online. .: Press Freedom Violations in China :. Rebecca Novick: Why Is Beijing Leaking the Revolution?
Xi Jinping Imposes Austerity Measures on China’s Elite. What Chinese Want Eight Years Ago. How the Great Firewall of China Works [INFOGRAPHIC] 6 Chinese Social Sites Will Turn Off the Lights Tomorrow for 'Earth Hour' EFF, others to Microsoft: Who's requesting our Skype data? 1,168 keywords Skype uses to censor, monitor its Chinese users.
Douban User Accounts Hacked, Used to Inflate Rating of Runaway Woman. Chinese Teen Murders His Parents So He Can Play Web Games in Peace. China's Top Online Advertising Platforms in 2012. An Experiment in HTML5 Gaming Inside WeChat. China's M-Commerce Shopping Spree to Hit $27.1 Billion in 2014, Surpassing US Mobile Shoppers (Infographic) Kaifu Lee: Check Out My Chart of How Often I Get Censored by Sina Weibo. Wang Xiaofang Explains How to Survive Life as a Chinese Bureaucrat - China Real Time Report. Why Asia Is More Innovative Than Silicon Valley. How to Fix China's Income Inequality. Cultural Revolution Murder Trial Captivates Netizens. Chinese Netizen Talks About ‘Laowai’ Foreign Men, Reactions. Mayor To Be Transferred, Residents Plead for Him to Stay.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00207594.2012.746463. Trust among Chinese 'drops to record low' |Society. Trust Among Chinese Drops to Record Low. China: "Our Military Has Never Supported Any Hacking Activity" China’s Army Is Seen as Tied to Hacking Against U.S. Could China Catch Lazy Government Officials With Webcams? A Shocking Expose of China’s Black PR Industry Implicates Government Officials, is Quickly Deleted from the Web. 删帖生意，一条灰色产业链. Wire-tapping Wars: The World of Official Espionage. Chinese Road Show Involves Dislocating Child’s Arms, Reactions. 10 Rules for a Successful Chinese Business Meeting | Startup noodle.
China's Anti-Corruption Campaign Pushes Luxury Underground.
China cyberspies highlighted by Schmidt book, Post report | Security & Privacy. China+Music. Media Player. ‘Bureaucracy Lit’ in China. Award: Matthew Niederhauser wins the John Kobal new work award - instituteartist.com. In China, Beware: A Camera May Be Watching You. Dissident end of 'leadership of thieves' in China. The Asia Pivot, Our Dsyfunctional China Policy, Japan and the Upcoming Abe-Obama Summit.
Why Do Chinese Billionaires Keep Ending Up in Prison? - Rebecca Chao. China - Curators. Leaked Speech Shows Xi Jinping's Opposition to Reform. Report: China's Regulators Contemplating End to Gaming Consoles Ban. Raj Indian Restaurant and Bar - Beijing - Venues Indian Restaurants. China's set to rule the skies of air travel. Top 50 Chinese Brands in 2013. Top Cities on Mainland China by Forbes. CHINA. CHINA. China - Curators. China - Curators. Infographic: Chinese Attitudes Toward Their Nation, And the World.
Queenie. Tease Boutique. #beijing #china. Apocalypse Chow. Tease Boutique. #beijing #china. Tease Boutique. #beijing #china #teaseboutique. Female room. Tease Boutique. #beijing #china. Men’s room. Tease Boutique. #beijing #china. Chow and Queenie. Tease Boutique. #beijing #china. Photo by soundspade. Cold in Beijing. #beijing #china #lido #walking. Coal and (De)construction. #china #beijing. Coal and (De)construction. #china #beijing. Coal and (De)construction. #china #beijing. Eric Schmidt: The Great Firewall of China will fall. Animadver : EWR ( NYC ) -> PEK ( Beijing... NYC Chinatown. Next stop Beijing. Photo by soundspade. China to build world's tallest building - in just 90 days - Asia - World.
China + Education.