China still does not have any animal cruelty law or animal protection law in place.  Law makers are proposing a such law named “Anti-Animal Cruelty Law (experts suggested draft)”, currently is in motion and under review.  However the draft proposed a ban on eating cats and dogs which is conflicting with the dog eating custom and culture at certain places in China…

From online.sh.cn: (source: Yangzi evening news)

The two meetings in Beijing this year, Beijing CPPCC members, Animal Protection Law Project Team Leader, the Chief of drafting experts and the law researcher of Academy of Social Sciences Chang Jiwen (常纪文) once again proposed legislation against animal cruelty. Chang Jiwen thinks that the banning of eating cats and dogs has already been publicly recognized in many places except for Guangdong province. However considering the number of national customs and habits of eating dog meat, the proposed draft suggests various provinces and cities to determine a fixed punishment measures system, it is not a rigidly uniformed ban.

» » » » Continue reading ‘China proposes law to ban eating cats and dogs’

Last week Han Han already mentioned about this news in his blog, The Chinese new year is here soon, people in China should be careful sending text messages, especially if you are in Shanghai, you don’t want your cell phone to stop working while sending text, and then going to the local police station to write a promise note on new years day! Here is the actual news and some netizens’ reactions.

“On what basis, you can look at my text messages?”

News from QQ:

In order to cooperate with the dedicated actions which were launched by nine ministries on penetrating and punishing obscene, pornographic and vulgar information on the internet and cell phone, China Mobile Shanghai branch currently has introduced a number of effective measures to cooperate with the public security department to block out the criminals’ “pornographic channels”.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Shanghai Mobile: cell phone sends pornographic text messages will be terminated, after being verified of course’

 “It’s not even a tad democratic”

This article (from Netease) got me really excited because I have always been interested in China’s democratization efforts. I previously translated a post on “How should we live before democracy?” As somewhat of a follow-up, this article will explain the changes happening in Guangzhou while also discussing how the Chinese government actually interprets democracy, which is something I’ve not seen discussed in most blogs about China (some of this is from my own blog).

» » » » Continue reading ‘A step toward democracy: The case of Guangzhou’

In early 2007, Niall Ferguson coined the term “Chimerica” to describe the economic relationship between the United States and China. At first, in 2007, Ferguson said Chimerica “seemed like a match made in heaven” – the Chinese did the lending, the Americans the borrowing. China and the US accounted for 40 percent of global growth from 1998 to 2007.

» » » » Continue reading ‘The disaster of “Chimerica” – Can both sides be losers?’

The largest BitTorrent website BTChina was shut down by the Chinese authority couple days ago and yesterday another popular media sharing site VeryCD.com was also offline. This created a buzz among the Chinese netizens. If you search for the term BTChina in twitter the most twitted phrase is BTChina+VeryCD连起来读就是变态中国很操蛋! (BTChina + VeryCD is Retarded China very fucking stupid. BT is the acronym of Bian Tai – retarded, perverted or abnormal in Chinese and CD is the acronym of Cao Dan – fucking stupid in Chinese)

» » » » Continue reading ‘China shuts down BitTorrent websites’

[Netease] Chinese TV series “Dwelling Narrowness” has caused national discussion on the continuously raising housing prices currently plaguing the market. Should young people (in China) who were born after 1980’s and just graduated from college be able to buy a home? On this issue, Ren Zhiqiang (任志强) boldly “speaks out directly without reservation”: Young people should not be able to afford houses. (You will find out who this guy is later.)

» » » » Continue reading ‘Young people should not be able to afford houses’

[Netease] “Not going outside wearing pajamas”. This is Shanghai city government’s request for the residents of the city prior to the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. However this provoked widespread controversy. On one hand, wearing pajamas does not conform to international etiquette, but there are voices also advocating that if the government makes a rule restricting wearing pajamas, then society loses some of its freedom.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Shanghai Government requests Residents to not wear Pajamas in public’

[Netease] A few days ago China Education Department published “General Standard Chinese Characters Table”, a draft for reviews and feedbacks by the general public intended to revise 44 Chinese Characters, also restored 51 variant characters. Review period begins on the 12^th ends on the 31^st of this month. This news resulted controversy debates. Yesterday according to the internet survey about 80% of netizens are against the change.

» » » » Continue reading ‘China Education Department to Revise 44 Chinese Characters Causes Debate’

A set of data attracted people’s attentions on the Chinese Internet – after a six month investigation Qinghua university institute of public administration team concluded that, charitable contributions coming from all over the country, a value of up to 76.712 billion Yuan of earthquake relief fund and materials donations, 80% of that may have gone to the Chinese government’s financial accounts, became government’s “extra income”, controlled by the government for disasters. Among the entire contributions, 58% of the donations have gone directly to the government.

» » » » Continue reading ‘80 Percent of the Earthquake Relief Donation Went to the Chinese Government’

Today I learned a new Chinese slang, 庐舍: (Pinyin: Lu She). The original meaning is “farmhouse”. When used as slang it is a phonetic translation of the English word “Loser”. Internet definition: Netizens who are over-indulged in the internet community on chat, animation, games and making friends etc. activities, without ambition and just muddling along. This group of people are so called “Loser Group” or “Loser Clan” (“庐舍族”). This forum post explains with a nice piece of “anti-loser” music video propaganda.

» » » » Continue reading ‘China Cracks Down on Internet “Losers”’

From Zong5.cn and everywhere else:

June 8, the 6^th “Sha-ho Cup” China Swimwear Design Contest Finals were hosted at the National Swimming Center “Water Cube”. However one of the swimwear designs using China’s National Flag caused heated discussion and debate. Does using National Flag as a design of swimwear tarnish the Nation Flag or even the Nation? Should this be condemned?

» » » » Continue reading ‘Chinese National Flag Bikini Fashion Show at Water Cube Sets off Online Debate’

From Financial Network, Beijing, Intern reporter: 王奇华
China internet department on June 18 announced to impose penalty to “Google China” website (google.cn) to suspend foreign internet searches, also the feature that automatically suggests different search keywords once start typing in search textbox. Google is being punished for linking to pornographic content. Chinese government ordered its rectification to immediately cleaning up pornographic and vulgar content.

» » » » Continue reading ‘China Orders Google to Suspend Foreign Internet Searches’

From HRIC:

A Chinese government directive requiring domestic computer manufacturers and manufacturers that export computers to China to pre-install filtering software – “Green Dam Youth Escort” software – was made public on June 8, 2009. Human Rights in China (HRIC) has translated the directive and compiled the following background information on the development and use of the software.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Chinese Government Orders Computer Manufacturers to Pre-install Filtering Software’

 BBC Chinese Department Reporter Qing Shang (尚清)

The recent appearance of a new book named “China is Unhappy” on the market in mainland China has caused hit discussions in the bookshops, and it is being enthusiastically boosted by the media.

This book’s author, Xiaojun Song (宋晓军), said that last October he and a group of friends chatted together. Afterwards, he organized the content of their conversation to form this book.

Therefore, perhaps this book should be called a conversation record.

» » » » Continue reading ‘“China is Unhappy” Nationalism Promotion?’