China hacks the world!

China is poised to take over the world with its impressive array of cyber warfare techniques, anti-satellite weaponry and unfair trade controls, according to a US Congressional report presented last Thursday.

The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission released its annual report to the US Congress and recommended 45 different courses of action to rectify what they declare as "impedments [sic] to U.S. Economic and national security interests".

It decries China's "heavy-handed" control of the economy in amassing a huge amount of foreign currency, which has been used to "manipulate currency trading and diplomatic relations with other nations."

In addition, the bipartisan commission (6 Democrats and 6 Republicans) alleges that China is stealing sensitive information from the US through hackers and claims that in 2007 5 million computers in America were subject to 43,880 attacks.

China is denying all of this, and Xinhua are reporting that the Foreign Ministry have gone as far as saying that the claims are "unworthy of rebuttal".

Beijing sees the report as another vilification of China in the Western press, a hot topic this year with media pressure on issues like Tibet, Xinjiang, the Olympics and freedom of the press hitting a nerve with the Chinese government.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Xinhua: "The commission always see China through distorted color spectacles, and intentionally create obstacles for the China-U.S. cooperation in extensive fields through smearing China deliberately and misleading the general public."

However, the report does acknowledge "some progress by China," especially in its continued involvement in non-proliferation talks.

US-China review
Xinhua: China rejects U.S. congressional panel report
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And it's back

So that was just a 15 minute hitch I suppose, back up and running now... Keep on reading...

What have YouTube done now?

As of a couple of minutes ago YouTube seems to have been taken off the lines in China... Not sure if this is a local problem but the site is fine through a VPN but not through your bog standard connection. If anyone has any idea what video has now angered someone somewhere, or if this is just a temporary glitch in the system let me know!

I haven't posted in a while but I will posting tomorrow about Shanghai's newest viral (x-rated) video, as well as a fire that claimed several lives this week but has since proved quite an interesting issue in the media.
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The importance of chinese measure words

So that last post was a misunderstanding of the Chinese on my part which led to a slightly erroneous post...

I read the headline as the 56th president, when in fact the use of the measureword 届 (jie - session) made it the 56th term of the American presidency.

Apologies for my crap Chinese. But why they're describing him winning the 56th term of the American presidency I don't know, to me, the 44th president sounds way better.

Anyway, this just goes to show that glossing over that one character in Chinese can completely change the meaning. Here the difference between 个(ge - measure word for person) and 届 meant I got very confused as to how Xinhua had calculated the number of presidents America has had over the past couple of hundred years.

The Xinhua story is now here Keep on reading...

China loves Obama, but isn't so sure who/what he is...

So a couple of hours ago Obama was elected in as President-Elect, with a fairly healthy clout of electoral college votes and it's all over the front page of Chinese news websites.

Unfortunately Xinhua seems to have made a mistake in their huge headline, which reads "Obama elected as 56th President of the United States."

The coverage seems pretty comprehensive, but despite overlooking the fact that the 56th President won't be elected until 2056, some chinese journos are confused as to what Obama is.

The video seems to be deleted now, or there's a problem with it at the minute, but Danwei are reporting that when CCTV-4 broke the news that Obama had clinched victory, they declared him as "the first black female pre... uh, first black president in American history."

Xinhua front page
Danwei on CCTV-4
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2008: the year of annoying mascots

Ok, so 2008 was more than that, lots of stuff happened. Bad stuff, good stuff, new stuff etc. But all of that will be covered by lots of people everywhere talking about the state of China after so many huge events (snow storms, riots, earthquake, Olympics, milk powder...)

For me though, one of the under reported aspects of 2008 was the presence of really badly designed mascots.

The Fuwa – the five mascots for the Olympics – have been around for a good while, not just this year, and they were pretty annoying. But nothing compares to the guy who's increasingly becoming more visible around Shanghai everyday: Hai Bao.

"Treasure of the sea," as his name translates, is a big, blue, smiling tooth-shaped character who is the image of the 2010 World Expo to be held in Shanghai. Apparently he's meant to be the shape of the Chinese character ren, meaning person. But i don't see it. To me, he's a big blue tooth with a weird quiff.

According to the official website for the expo, Hai Bao "is the good well ambassador of Shanghai Expo. He is embracing friends from all over the world with his arms and confident smile."

Mmhm.



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