China

  He shoots, he pours! The Irish Volunteer has taken over the space next door and will reopen it as the Hockey Bar. The IV has a long association with...

The Tibet Autonomous Region will open outward to attract more visitors from abroad and that this summer, after the main Tibetan legislator. In 2010, the central government had proposed to the region to become a global tourist destination, receiving from January to November last year, more than 190,000 foreign tourists, according to the local tourist office. “The autonomous region will become more open to the outside to ensure that the tourism industry is growing in the right direction, said Padma Choling, chairman of the Legislative Assembly of the region. “The Open World this summer tourism,” he told China Daily in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the annual session of the 12th National People’s Congress. The summer will be the starting point, because the conditions are rather harsh winter. Padma Choling said that without opening the tourism industry will not make any breakthrough and it will be difficult to build Tibet into a global tourist destination. In 2012, the region attracted 10.58 million visitors, representing an annual increase of 21.7%, generating 12.64 billion yuan ($ 2 billion) in revenue. Tibetan authorities expect a contribution of the tourism industry in the local GDP, climbing to 20% in late 2015 and a number of foreign tourists who should represent more than 10% of the total, generating more than 15% income. But Padma Choling, the opening must be the foreign policy of the state and be “adapted to the local situation.” “The sine qua non of this opening is upgrading facilities and service capabilities to meet the requirements.” And we must protect the country at the border. ” Tibet has a host of tourist attractions, including the world’s highest peak, Mount Qomolangma, known as Mount Everest in the West, the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon and the Potala Palace. Given the need to protect the unique lifestyle of ethnic, cultural relics and the local ecology, international tourists must apply for an entry permit. In 2010, the former spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, Qin Gang, said that the region could not meet all the tourists due to restrictions such as natural conditions. Consequently, the authorities began to manage the flow by introducing an entrance fee, he said. “Many foreigners, including journalists, have traveled to Tibet to work, visits and interviews. I think we’ll see more foreigners coming to Tibet as the region grows and travel conditions are steadily improving. ” The Tourism Bureau of Tibet has set up offices in many places, including Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, the United States, Japan, organizing group tours for foreign and responding to inquiries. The development of tourism has also benefited the local population. In 2012, nearly 53 000 farmers and ranchers 13,000 households operated hospitality services for tourists. Copyright © 2013 Mysterious China Blog. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@www.mysteriouschina.com so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by Taragana

The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. Guangdong Propaganda Department: On the morning of May 17, a Huanan Agricultural University PhD student hanged himself and passed away. The media must not investigate, report, or comment on the incident. If necessary, cover the story in strict accordance with police wire copy. (May 18, 2013) ????????5?17???????????????????????????????????????????? Guangdong Propaganda Department: Regarding the planned Binhai power plant in Shenzhen and related issues; and the demolition and relocation of a public cemetery for victims of the Anti-Japanese War in Guangzhou, and related issues; the media must not report or comment. (May 18, 2013) ?????????????????????????????????????????????? CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation. Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date on CDT Chinese is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source. © Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: censorship, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, forced demolitions, Guangdong, media censorship, Ministry of Truth, propaganda, suicide, World War II Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Date: May 19th 2013 9:13p.m. Contributed by: thewooster

Date: May 19th 2013 9:13p.m. Contributed by: thewooster

Do we really want to go up that?! Yes, because by that point, one's already climbed up pretty high up Needle Hill already! And yes, there really are beautiful views to be had  atop the 532 meter hill that's  Hong Kong's joint 40th highest (with Mount Parker) Last week, a friend and I tried to hike up Mount Hallowes, only to have to abandon our bid to go up Hong Kong's 100th

Max Fisher at The Washington Post ran a blog post last week featuring a world map of “racial tolerance” based on data from the World Values Survey (WVS), and it didn’t take long before the collective peer review power of Tufts University and Reddit found at least two examples of “fat fingers” where a “no, I don’t mind living next to other races” was mistakenly swapped with a “yes, I’m totally racist when it comes to choosing neighbors” for Bangladesh and Hong Kong, thanks to mistranslation and poor survey design. Others have pointed out the inherent flaw in assuming that the construct of “race” is universal and that news organizations’ need to feed the content beast creates a game of telephone where complex data is oversimplified and misinterpreted without real scrutiny. I first encountered the WVS last year in my coursework on International Librarianship, where Geert Hofstede’s book Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind was used as a primary text and it served as solid jumping-off point for discussion. Hofstede is the granddaddy of cross-cultural studies quants, building a cross-cultural theory and corporate consulting brand out of data he developed as head of HR for IBM Europe in the 1960s, the same time Robert McNamara was using IBM mainframes to plot effective firebombing raids of Japan. Those were the salad days for punchcards. Like the WVS, Hofstede has survey datasets from dozens of countries over decades from which he and others glean tantalizing correlations (which so easily slip towards causation) between conceptual frameworks that “emerge” from the data (individualism vs. collectivism, for example) and GDP, economic growth, war, etc. At first, the book was fascinating as an American living in China – “wow, this validates so many things I anecdotally observe with hard data!” By the end of the book, however, I was completely disenthralled. The assumptions, generalizations, and seeming contradictions piled up in a doomed effort to render “national culture,” if such a thing is quantifiable, legible (yes, I’m finally reading Scott’s Seeing Like a State), looking like nothing more than the psychologist and sociologist equivalent to the old hack joke “White people drive like this, but black people drive like that!” Unless you’re a committed professional like Michael Harris Bond (who developed the original Chinese Values Survey) who will spend years wrestling with the data and appreciating its limitations, you’re better off watching Russell Peters.

Over the years my law firm has been called in a number of times to try to get rid of an out of control Legal Representative of a WOFE.  Typically, the company calling us thinks that it ought to be able to rid itself of its WFOE Legal Representative simply by issuing a resolution making it so. Wrong. The last time we executed a change of Legal Representative for a Beijing WFOE, we had to draft/provide the following: Amendment of the Articles of Association in Chinese. Four originals. Amendment of the Articles of Association in English.  For reference only. Application letter for commercial bureau in Chinese.  Two originals. Application letter for commercial bureau in English: For reference only. Application letter for SAFE in Chinese.  Two originals. Application letter for SAFE in English. For reference only. Appointment letter in Chinese. Four originals. Appointment letter in English. For reference only. Introduction letter in Chinese. One original, with Beijing company chop. Introduction letter in English. For reference only. Letter of undertaking in Chinese. Four originals. Letter of undertaking in English. For reference only. Removal letter in Chinese. Four originals. Removal letter in English. For reference only. Resolution of the Investor/WFOE owner in Chinese. Four originals Resolution of the Investor/WFOE owner in English. For reference only. Power of attorney in Chinese for seal record. Two Originals. Power of attorney in English for seal record in English. For reference only. Power of attorney in Chinese. Four originals. Power of attorney in English. For reference only. We also needed the following documents from our client: Business license. Original and two copies with Company Chop. Approval certificate.  Original and two copies with Company Chop. Most recent full year audit report.  Two copies with Company Chop. Most recent capital verification report. Two copies with Company Chop. Foreign exchange IC card. Original. Enterprise code certificate. Original and one copy. Tax certificate. Original and one copy. Custom registration certificate. Original. Financial certificate. Original and one copy. Registry Book for Foreign-Invested Enterprises. Original. Notice of annual inspection. One copy with Company Chop Annual examination certificate. Two copies with Company Chop The above was what was required the last time we did this in Beijing.  The requirements vary by city and even by district and by examiner within each city. Bottom Line:  Choose your legal representative wisely because it will take a lot of time and a lot of effort to remove him or her involuntarily.

Wedding portrait © Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Mr. Wang Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

China's state-run People’s Daily ran a piece titled “The Post-80?s Generation is Dispirited: Early Decline Cause for Alarm[zh],” arguing that China’s youth born after 1980 face “spiritual confusion and a loss of identity” despite better material living conditions. In response, social media celebrity and social critic “Zuoyeben“[zh] wrote an essay on the real cause of this issue. The essay, which reveals different social problems in today's China, has found resonance among many Weibo users. Tea Leaf Nation has translated the essay. Written by Abby · comments (0) Share: Donate · facebook · twitter · reddit · StumbleUpon · delicious · Instapaper