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At The Guardian, Jonathan Kaiman reports the approval by Chinese environmental officials of a proposed 314-meter-tall dam despite fears about its effects on the ecology of Sichuan’s Dadu River, an indirect tributary of the Yangtze. The new dam would stand almost 130 meters taller than the Three Gorges Dam, and 12 taller than the current world leader, Tajikistan’s Soviet-built Nurek Dam. China’s environment ministry acknowledged that the dam would have an impact on the area’s highly biodiverse flora and fauna. “The project will affect the spawning and movement of rare fish species, as well as the growth of endangered plants, including the Chinese yew, which is under first-class state protection,” the ministry said, according to Xinhua. The ministry proposed counter-measures to mitigate the environmental impact, such as “protecting fish habitats in tributaries, building fish ladders and increasing fish breeding and releasing”, Xinhua reported. The project is still awaiting a final go-ahead from China’s state council. [Source] Reuters’ David Stanway notes that state power firm Guodian, a subsidiary of which will build the new Shuangjiangkou dam, has previously faced criticism from the government for starting work on projects before receiving final approval. Large-scale hydropower is central to Beijing’s plans for greater use of fossil fuel alternatives. It faces strong and widespread opposition, however, because of its impact on communities, plants and wildlife, to say nothing of accusations that it can increase the risk of landslides and earthquakes. Another currently contentious hydropower project is the long-delayed series of dams on the upper Nu (or Salween) River. For more on the Nu dams and related environmental issues, see ‘Dams & Deforestation: Yunnan’s Water Woes‘ at CDT. © Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: dams, electricity, hydroelectricity, Hydropower, rivers, Sichuan, wildlife preservation, Yangtze Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The East by Southeast blog has posted a detailed account of Thursday’s protests in Kunming over the planned PetroChina oil refinery and reported paraxylene (PX) plant. The account describes how the protests switched focus midway through from just opposing the PX plant to broader opposition to the entire oil refinery: Justice Gate sits at the intersection of Renmin Road (People’s Road) one of Kunming’s busiest thoroughfares. Large shopping malls sit across the intersection and a pedestrian commercial street leads to the site of the 5/4 protest. The police forces were lax in allowing the group to migrate southward to the gate, after all, it led the protest away from the government headquarters, but they were determined to not allow the crowd to shut down traffic at the Renmin Road. A human wall of police officers five-thick formed to prevent the mass from breaking through the gate. Underneath the shade of the great oak trees, the protester’s energy seemed to stall out. New tactics like singing the Chinese national anthem with the words “Rise Up! Rise Up!” “Forward on! Forward on!” reinvigorated the group. Elderly women sang Red Songs from revolutions soon to be forgotten. Outside of the gate, the blazing sun lighting up the intersection provided contrast to the shaded area occupied by the protesters. It was at this moment that the movement changed. No longer were anti-PX slogans being shouted – the crowd shifted to “Oil Refinery Get out of Kunming!” Over and over. One woman shouted in Kunming’s local dialect, “Rise up Kunmingers! Rise up Yunnanese!” and the mass movement discovered a new slogan that hit very close to home. A new file of police rushed to prevent protesters from breaking out into the square, but their efforts were of no use. At 12:00pm the protesters broke through the police wall and shut down the busy intersection. Traffic going both ways on busy Renmin road reached a standstill. Storefront owners rushed out to see what was going on. Crowds gathered on shopping mall balconies to cheer on protesters and take photos. The movement had emerged from the darkness into the light and gathered new steam. An article in the Guardian looks at the demonstrations as part of a rising tide of environmental protest in China: The Chinese public are becoming increasing concerned about the state of their local environment and up to 80% believe that environmental protection should be a higher priority than economic development, according to a new survey. The survey, carried out by the Public Opinion Research Centre in collaboration with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, measured the public’s attitudes towards environmental protection and how they rate the government’s performance. Such protests appear to be often tolerated by the authorities and, like the Shanghai protests, are sometimes successful in their goals. Last October, a week-long series of protests in Ningbo in eastern China by thousands of residents was sucessful in stopping work on an oil and petrochemical complex. The frequency of protests is rising as China’s increasingly affluent and middle-class society becomes more aware of environmental issues. The number of environmental protests rose by 120% from 2010 to 2011, according to Yang Chaofei, the vice-chairman of the Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences. Yang a told a lecture organised by the Standing Committee of the National’s People’s Congress on the social impact of environmental problems that the number of environmental ‘mass incidents’ has grown an average of 29% annually from 1996 to 2011. He said that the number of incidents which involve concerns about dangerous chemicals and heavy metal pollution have risen since 2010. [Source] Read more about the Kunming protests via CDT. © Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: environmental activism, environmental protests, Kunming PX Download Too

Four more deaths have brought the total number of fatalities from the H7N9 bird flu to 36. Yet despite these deaths, there is evidence that the virus is not spreading as fast or as widely as many feared. From Al Jazeera: The United Nations health agency said a written statement on Friday that the four deaths were from cases that had already been identified in laboratories. It said here had been no new cases of infection with H7N9 Since May 8. The WHO reiterated that there was no evidence that the new strain of bird flu, which was first detected in patients in China in March, was passing easily from human to human. If such a feature emerged it could spark a pandemic. But it said: “Until the source of infection has been identified and controlled, it is expected that there will be further cases of human infection with the virus.” [Source] Fears that the virus would morph into a global pandemic have eased as hospitals around the country have seen fewer new cases. From Quartz: The passing of the crisis would be good news not just for Chinese citizens. Epidemiologists have long worried that bird flu could morph into a virus contagious between humans, which could give rise to a global pandemic. Experts at the World Health Organization (WHO) and other institutions have said that the possibility of human-to-human transmission in China’s recent outbreak is not confirmed but can’t be ruled out either. A total of 131 people in China have caught H7N9, and 36 people have died from it, according to the WHO. But shutting down live poultry markets across the country seems to have slowed the outbreak’s spread. Warmer temperatures may also be helping. Zhejiang health officials said there have been no new cases of the virus over the past 28 days. They have also now released dozens of people who were being examined because of their contact with H7N9 patients in the province. [Source] As fears have dissipated and with the help of government subsidies to the hard-hit poultry industry, the price of chicken is on the rise, according to People’s Daily: The price per kilo of dressed chicken hit 13.51 yuan (2.18 U.S. dollars) on May 15, up from an annual low of 12.97 yuan on May 12, but the figure was still 4.2 percent lower than the same time last year, according to data from MOA. The number of transactions in the poultry sector from May 6 to May 12 increased 25.6 percent from the equivalent period in April, but they were still down 67.2 percent year on year, the data showed. The price rebound is the result of central government subsidy initiatives that involved pumping 600 million yuan into major poultry-processing companies and breeders nationwide to stabilize the industry, said Bi Meijia, MOA chief economist. [Source] © Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: bird flu, food prices, H7N9, public health Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The dire manners and “uncivilized behavior” of some Chinese tourists abroad are harming the country’s image, said a top official who lamented their poor “quality and breeding”, according to state-run media. China Travel | 0 Comments

This was one of those weeks where I had lots of photos for Sandi's chosen Photo Hunt theme (Glass) and Gattina's (Show hands) but not all that many which combined them.  But after hunting through my photo archive, I've come across at least three -- and I didn't even have to use a magnifying glass when searching! ;b Re the top-most photo: Here's more proof that Hong Kong has a

From NetEase: Kunming Mechanic Driving Unlicensed Lamborghini Hits and Kills 1 Person On the afternoon of May 13 at about 4:40pm, a yellow Lamborghini sports car without a license plate crashed respectively into a Hyundai SUV and a electric scooter in front of the Liujia Sub-District Office on Guannan Avenue in Kunming, causing the electric scooter rider to die instantly at the scene. According to traffic police, the perpetrator is not the owner of this Lamborghini but an employee of a repair shop and when the incident occurred, he happened to be test-driving the vehicle. According to a police officer’s analysis, the Lamborghini’s at the time may have been 200 kilometers per hour. [Above] This picture is of May 13, Kunming, after the incident had happened, of Traffic Police Eighth Brigade traffic officers taking photos for evidence. According to one eyewitness’s recollection, when the incident happened, there was another man riding in the Lamborghini’s passenger seat. Traffic Police Eighth Brigade officers surveying the scene. Soon afterward, the driver-responsible was taken to the Traffic Police Brigade for questioning. Traffic Police Eighth Brigade officers surveying the scene. An electric scooter hit and sent flying dozens of meters away. Comments from NetEase: ?????????? ip?1.196.*.*: The owner of the repair shop is going to cry until he shits. ????? [???????]: (responding to above) Shouldn’t the places authorized to repair this car usually be agents or after-sale services? pyytfwz [??????????]: (responding to above) Asking for the truth. ???Bosh??? [??????????]: I reckon [the driver] must’ve gotten too excited stepping on the gas~~ So this car is still be so stable even at 200 [km/hr]~~ ???? [?????????????]: With this, this guy’s family is going to be ruined. ??????? ip?118.186.*.*: If this fancy car belongs to the son of some government leader, wouldn’t this [incident] get the leader exposed? ??????????? ip?121.31.*.*: Expensive cars are indeed different, so tough. ????????? ip?119.39.*.*: (responding to above) Poor Lamborghini! colabear999 [??????????]: (responding to above) It’s the car and the person who were hit by him that are really poor. ??????????? ip?121.31.*.*: (responding to above) This is fate, nothing you can do about it. Comments from QQ: ???? ??????: What? Driving without a license is called test-driving? Sigh… even if he had a license, he’ll still be spending a few lifetimes paying compensation. ???? 285460174: I think if this mechanic also died in this incident, it would be the best ending for him. If he doesn’t die, words cannot describe the life he is going to face. ???? ??: It has never occur to you people that he’s just a scapegoat for a rich person who has gotten himself in trouble. Would the boss of a repair shop carelessly ask a mechanic without a driver’s license to go test-drive a car? Don’t be fooled by this fake news reported by a transportation department that can be bought off with money. Ask them to tell you who the owner of this car is and you’ll immediately know the truth! Sigh… ???? ????: Suspicious points in this case: 1. (Shops capable of repairing a Lamborghini should be big repair shops! Their management ought to be very strict.) Would the boss let an employee without a driver’s license drive such an expensive car? 2. Even if he would, would [the employee] drive this fast?! Hitting and sending a motorcycle flying dozens of meters! ???? yan: A bitter fate. You simply weren’t destined to harness this famous car that does not belong to you. Sadhu, sadhu. ???? ??????: Very good, the repair shop will have to pay compensation for this, and once it does, it’ll be returned to its state before the liberation [become so poor that it'll be like China before the Communists took over]. ??????? ????: The last picture [the 3rd picture in this post], what’s the brand of the car at the lower left corner? So long… Experts, en

fruits and vegetables © Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: vhines200 Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke‘s A Touch of Sin (???) screened today at the Cannes Film Festival, where it is being considered for the ”Golden Palm,” the prestigious festival’s highest prize. Today’s Cannes round-up from Indiewire has the trailer: Click here to view the embedded video. The Guardian’s first look at the film gives a synopsis: [...T]he film is [...] an angry, painful, satirical lunge into what the director clearly sees as the dark heart of modern China, and a real attempt to represent this to audiences elsewhere in the world. He sees China as a globalised economic power player suffering a new and violent Cultural Revolution of money-worship in which a cronyist elite has become super-rich in the liquidation of state assets, creating poisonous envy in the dispossessed who hear all about others’ wealth from the internet, and are supposed to gossip aspirationally about it on their mobile phones. A key scene in the film shows someone brooding over Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. It is a fractured and divided story, like shards of a shattered mirror. Different strands and characters and stories emerge, tangentially concerned with each other. Jia has taken his plotlines from newspapers, violent stories of criminal despair, and by meshing them together, these tales, often involving guns, build up a picture of China as a desolate Wild West of lawless violence and cynicism. A worker erupts with anger at how the mine-chief has somehow been able to afford a sports car and to lease a private plane. Three brothers coming back to their hometown for their mother’s birthday reveal themselves to be deeply unhappy in various ways, and the unhappiness somehow always manifests itself in violence. Two have handguns: one casually slays three guys who have attempted to rob him on the road. Another, who has been telling his wife he has been travelling the country looking for work, reveals himself to be an ice-cool armed robber who doesn’t scruple to murder women in cold blood for their expensive designer bags. Another is having an affair with a sauna receptionist (played by Jia’s longtime leading actor Zhao Tao) and this too ends in a bloody confrontation. [Source] The Hollywood Reporter looks at one Chinese web-user’s reaction to the trailer of a film that, “based on true events,” uses the drama of national news to inspire a scathing cinematic inquiry into modern Chinese society: One Weibo user described the film as seeming “very audacious,” adding: “Judging from the trailer, it contains a lot of critical scenes based in reality that were created with no fear of the censorship system.” Little was previously known about Jia’s film, but the trailer hints at several storylines based on widely discussed — but never filmed — Chinese social ills and political scandals, such as a notorious case from Hubei province in 2009, when a pedicurist named Deng Yujiao stabbed and killed a local bureaucrat after he reportedly slapped her in the face with a wad of cash and tried to force himself on her (based on the trailer, Jia’s wife and muse, Zhao Tao plays a woman placed in a similar predicament). Another scene features snippets of news footage from the 2011 high-speed train accident in China that killed 40 people and led to a major scandal over mismanagement of the country’s railway ministry – and yet another mentions Chinese laborers killing themselves in sweatshops, a likely reference to the wave of suicides that took place at the factories of Foxcon, the company known as the assembler of the Apple iPhone. [Source] The putative use of sensitive headlines to inspire a film that is, by many accounts, filled with the pulp violence of a Tarantino flick, begs a question — what will Beijing’s censors make of this film? The Globe and Mail reports on Jia Zhangke’s confidence that his film, co-produced by a state-funded company, will hit scre

The Alantic reports: Last weekend, Reuters photographer Carlos Barria traveled to Zheijiang Province, China, to photograph some of the 1,000 Harley Davidson enthusiasts who attended China's 5th annual Harley Davidson National Rally, part of the company's 110-year anniversary. Harley Davidson only began official sales in China in 2005, and its bikes are considered to be luxury items by Chinese tax authorities, so they are taxed at extremely high rates -- a 2013 motorcycle might sell for 200,000 yuan ($32,500), approximately four times the average annual salary in Beijing. Transportation authorities have also placed Harleys in the same category as electric bikes, horses and bicycles, so they cannot be ridden on highways and major avenues. [18 photos] See more: http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/05/harley-davidson-national-rally-in-china/100515/

Chinese authorities have approved plans for a hydroelectric dam project on the Dadu river in Sichuan which, when completed, will be the tallest dam ever constructed. Following the tradition of epic water-works projects like the Three Gorges Dam, the Dadu dam will provide massive amounts of energy while obliterating even more massive amounts of endangered plants, rare fish, and cultural relics. [ more › ]