The return of the nail houses

Well, the nail-houses have never gone anywhere, it’s more a matter of where the media has gone when they don’t cover them. I’m not saying
there ought to be round the clock coverage, just that the phenomenon is and always will be there. Here’s a picture of a store in Guangzhou:

"钉子户"小店坚守路中央 被称"最牛副食店"(图)_网易新闻中心 via kwout

Here’s another picture of a place in Guangzhou where the developers supposedly dug a moat around the place–on purpose we know not. Of course you can imagine what both sides are saying, it’s the stock answers and rhetoric.

Lastly, here’s a picture from an article about another niubi nail house in Luoyang, where the old man is holed up without water and electricity because of his conviction that the demolition is illegal. He has some proof, but none of us out here without access to the documents and knowledge of the intricacies of Chinese law are not going to be able to really make a disinterested judgment on this matter.
However, kudos to him just for sticking it to the Man.

洛阳最牛“钉子户”插国旗护家续 质疑拆迁违法_网易新闻中心 via kwout

Chinese journalist Jing Jianfeng to go on trial

Just saw this on a Xici thread.

Basically, the story goes like this: Cheng Weixiu (成维秀), a migrant worker from Lin county in Shanxi province（陝西臨縣) was supposedly beaten to death by a coal mine boss Xue Sanwei (薛三卫) in 2007. Cheng’s relative (cousin?) Cheng Yunqiang (成运强) and some other relatives paid a visit to a hotel that Xue owned to seek redress, conflict ensued, and the local police detained Cheng Yunqiang on the grounds that they were inciting violence or crime. However, Cheng managed to escape to Beijing, where he got in touch with civil law journalist Jing Jianfeng (景剑峰) to discuss his case. However, the Lin county police came to Beijing and discovered Cheng’s whereabouts, detained him, and since Jing Jianfeng was there, detained him as well.

After Jing was taken, various rumors were spread around; some say he was extorting the mine boss for 7 million RMB.

The post then encourages people to pay attention to Jian’s case, because he is going on trial October 24, 2008 in Lvliang City, Shanxi province (山西省吕梁市临县) on three counts: obstruction of justice, hiding known fugitives, and receiving a bribe of a 8700 RMB valued laptop computer.

The writer of the post then encourages people to pay attention and stand up for Jian because, as a reporter, anyone of us could be next!

After reading this, I decided to find and read some other reports that Jian has written. The few that I have cursorily read are all quite interesting. There is one written this year about Foshan in Guangdong province, where a former village named Buxin (布心) was made part of Foshan city and all the former villagers given city hukous. However, they lost their livelihood in this process: formerly collectively owned agricultural land has been requisitioned by the government. This happened in 1992, and according to the report, the people of Buxin feel that their standard of living has suffered since then: one person said “before 1992, our lives were getting better day by day. And since 1992, our lives have been getting worse day by day.“

The developers are associated with the government. They gave the villagers compensation for the property and objects on the land, but crucially, not the land itself: in 1992 the land was worth 35,000 rmb per mu, and with 4000 mu or so that comes out to 150 million RMB. The price of land now is worth 450,000 RMB per mu, which means that their former land is now worth about 1.8 billion RMB.

In the beginning, the two development companies had given the villagers some jobs, but after some SOEs went bankrupt or laid off workers, most of the villagers lost their jobs, and being unemployed were not qualified for any compensation. Despite their low incomes they were not given any basic social welfare. Even though they have the hukous, they don’t have basic medical insurance, unemployment insurance, or retirement/old age insurance.

It is quite telling that many of the villagers in Buxin are actually envious of the neighboring villages, which have not become part of any cities, and therefore are able to keep their agricultural land, which provides a basic source of income, and which allowed them to create several enterprises as well.

There’s another interesting report Jian wrote about the so-called Guangzhou phenomenon, which basically means that down in Guangzhou, the representatives/legislators are encouraged to speak the truth. They are encouraged to openly communicate rather than repeat the same tired cliches and nostrums. They are encouraged to speak their minds, even if what they say could be–gasp!–wrong, or erroneous.

Further proof that in many regards, Guangzhou is the vanguard of Chinese political culture.

I don’t think that Jing is a real muckracker, but in a place like China, one wonders if not this whole business has not been vetted or at least conveniently ignored by the powers that be, and if that has anything to do with what Jian writes. I don’t know enough about Jian or his work to say. I think it’s safe enough to say that he is being placed on trial on account of this Cheng Yunqiang business, even though that is absurd as it is.

jian jianfeng, press, reporters, freedom, china, chinese, media, crime, coal, miners, mine, law, trials, court

Nanyang: Man fined 1900 yuan for having porno on his computer

Man, I’d hate to see what I would get fined if they … Poor Ren Chaoqi, you really have to feel for this guy — he got his fifteen minutes of fame for being fined 1900 RMB for having some dirty videos on his computer. The story goes that the police were checking up on someone else’s computer, a friend of Ren’s perhaps, and then decided to check his computer too. The reason that he got fined is that according to the police, having downloaded something on bit torrents means that you were uploading (seeding) as well, which means that you are, in effect, spreading porno far and wide in China, and that’s against the law.

This whole issues has made the Baidu Nanyang BBS into one of the most heavily trafficked in the last few days. And that has to do with the fact that a supposed “internet policeman” called Kuang Re de Feng (狂热的风）[which means something like 'crazy' or 'fanatical' wind] has dived into the fray, answering the questions, comments, criticisms of netizens, igniting something of a flame war.

Not surprisingly, there are plenty of people who think that this whole kind of thing is preposterous — not the amount of the fine, just the idea that your privacy can be breached and then, because you have some porn on your computer, that you must be fined even though you’re mostly just using it for late-night stroke material and not trying to promote the next Dirk Diggler.

Here’s what the first commenter said:

狂热的风我想问你几句？你怎么知道任超奇是的片子是BT下载的？我还说是从是HTTP下载了呢？第二点谁给你们的权利可以随便搜查别人电脑的？是不是可以这么讲你们可以半夜跑进别人家搜查下电脑？一无所获后再敲开邻居的门顺便搜查下啊！！谁给你们的权利，适用什么法律啊！！

[translation: Kuang Re De Feng, i want to ask you: how do you know that the videos that Ren downloaded are from BT? What if i say it was from HTTP? And secondly, what gives you the right to search other people's computers? Does this mean that you can just come in the middle of the night and search people's computers? And if you find nothing, are you going to just knock on the neighbors' doors and search their computers while you are at it? Who gave you the right, what kind of law are you using?!"]

china, internet, porn, tech, computers, BT, privacy, law, nanyang, henan

ATM scams in China…this is how they do it

银行因挂失电话冗长误事 赔偿客户1万元(图)_网易新闻中心 via kwout

Never deposit a huge wad of money in the bank machine, at least not in Guangzhou, and definitely not in front of strange men that you don’t know. The scam is interesting: Mr. Shu puts the money in, and just as he’s about to finish, a guy next to him says “you dropped some money” and as he bends down to look, another man on the other side puts another bank card into the slot. Shu gets up and thinks that is his card, and walks off. Well maybe he doesn’t walk off—the article says that he was strongly encouraged to leave by the criminals, so it’s hard to say when Shu first noticed something was wrong.
The men, now having access to his account (the real card was still inside), transfer 50,000 RMB out of Shu’s account and also take out some money.

Shu has sued the bank for several reasons. Firstly, there was the phone system: it took him a long time to get through the maddening voice prompt system to the point where he could report the loss of his card. By the time he got someone on the phone and got through with reporting the loss, the money in his bank had long since disappeared. He argued that it was the fault of that system for making him lose precious time and money. He also sued the bank for placing the machines too close together.

The court ruled that the bank had to pay Shu 20% of his losses, which amounted to a bit over 10,000 RMB. The rest, it decided, was his fault for not being more careful and for falling for the old switcheroo.

China Media Say Ten Multinational Corporations Fail On CSR

This is from the China CSR newsletter:

August 5, 2008
Local sources report that according to a committee organized by Chinese media, ten multinational corporations have been exposed for lack of corporate social responsibility in China.

According to Sina.com, the ten companies are Sanyo, Michelin, P&G, Carlsberg, Starbucks, LG, Federal Express, Honda, Lucent, and Jinmailang.

The committee used the LCL5+1 evaluation system, developed by Liu Chuanlun, chief editor of Multinational Corporation, China Enterprise News. It refers to a mix of research results from the UN Global Compact, RepuTex, and other others. The six areas the LCL5+1 evaluation system covers are illegal employment and infringing employees’ legal rights and interests; product quality; illegal management; lack of honesty; safety or environmental accidents; and bad influence. Once a company fails in the first five areas, it is regarded as defaulting in its CSR. Combined with “bad influence”, the company will be graded for the levels of its problems.

Some companies like Michelin have sent letters to local Chinese media explaining their behavior since the campaign in February 2008.

i wonder about all of them, but am curious the most about Starfucks…i wonder what aspect they failed in.

Old man kicks Chen Shuibian in the ass, Chinese people rejoice

Well, I was about to write “old” until I realized that my parents are about the same age. Shu Anquan, 64, waited outside the Taipei courthouse where former
Taiwanese prez Chen Shuibian took the stand as the defendant. Shu comes from a group called 中华爱国同心会, which means that he’s more or less
pro-China, or at least pro-Chinese. Kicking the ex-prez in the tush instantly earned Shu his fifteen minutes of fame, which he used to promote his cause,
saying that he’d waited four years for the chance to give the Taiwanese independence-leaning politician a piece of his mind. Of course, Shu
says “I represent the one billion Chinese people in the world” in kicking Chen, which is what makes this news fit to print in China. They don’t really
print stuff about Chen’s supporters, or interviews with pro-Green camps about this court case, or about much in general. If you spend enough
time in Taiwan or the diaspora you realize quick enough that there are plenty of people who aren’t willing to harmoniously integrated into
the motherland just yet.

Notice to Chinese petitioners: if you fight the law, the law will win.

徐贲：善待底层民情_网易新闻中心 via kwout

These two pictures, from Hunan province, have been making the rounds on the internet because of what it says on the banners: the first one says “谁不依法信访就打击谁” which means “whoever unlawfully petitions the government will be attacked” while the second one says “违法上访，坐牢罚款”, which means “illegal petitions will be result in jail sentences and fines”. There are, evidently, even more. It’s amusing, in a completely depressing way: there’s an inherent contradiction in telling people that there are both legal and illegal ways of having recourse to the law. For example, going to the provincial petition office, or even more sinfully, Beijing—that would be a loss of face for local government, and that’s exactly what operates behind the linguistic facade here—there are “laws”, but calling a spade a spade, they are really “rules” for well-behaved and docile citizens that can be, if necessary, be imposed by state force

Characters painted on walls and banners in prominent places have always been one of the government’s more friendly ways of reminding the people where the lines are. I’m reminded of the one-child policy banners and slogans, where people were told that they would be punished if they had more than one, etc. The not so subtle message, of course, is that the state can use the various and sometimes violent means of keeping the troublemakers and rabble-rousers down.

It makes me pessimistic to even think about it, because the distance between China and true social progress is not measured in what treaties it signs or what “ism” holds power, but in how the state perceives itself vis-a-vis the hoi polloi: as a deferential servant, or as its master. Of course, it’s never completely one or the other, even at its best or most abysmal—but as I am currently reading The Age of Revolution by Eric Hobsbawm, it strikes me the historical struggles of the Europeans, in the 19th c. and beyond—manifested in their (sometimes failed) revolutions, insurrections, and political mass movements—were precisely about this, about carving out this space for the people that the violent arms of the government could not reach. This is the practical, day-to-day meaning of the universalistic conception of rights—it’s our protection against the arbitrary violence that the king, emperor, and state can use against us.

The troubles in Weng’an and Jiang Jie He village: gangs, dams, mines, gambling, death

I was reading Southern Weekend’s investigation into the Weng’an region: the common wisdom now is that the problems didn’t begin or end with the June 28 incident, but that the latter was merely what happened when long simmering problems reached the boiling point. This report about a place called Jiang Jie He Village (瓮安县龙塘乡江界河村), where there has been a long-standing antagonism between the local government and the people.

The situation is this: the village was moved because of a hydropower project (dam), and as you might imagine, the compensation became the focal point for the villagers affected. They were offered a lump sum of around 18,000RMB. The villagers asked why people in other villages and counties were offered more–500rmb per square meter, for example, when they were only given 232. For every orange tree they lost, people in neighboring places were given 1000 rmb, while the people in Jiang Jie He were only given 100 rmb per tree.

The stand-offs predictably became violent, and the villagers gathered en masse. They held a couple of gov’t cars hostage, and eventually the government brought in 400 police. Thirty-four villagers included women and children were injured. Some of the injured sought treatment in local hospitals and were refused. Many of them had to treat themselves or cross the river and go back home. Incidents like these were not rare.

The article also mentions the effect of sulfur mining. The mining began in 1998, and sometime around 2003, the water levels in the soil began to drop, which made it difficult for the peasants to irrigate their fields. Furthermore, local sources of potable water began drying up, or the water would turn murky white. In fact there are loads of different kinds of mines all around Weng’an:

除了磷矿之外，瓮安还拥有煤、铁、硫铁、铅、锌、铝、硫磺、硅石、重晶石、钾页岩等矿产。这些矿产遍布瓮安，因此各地矿群纠纷不断。而多数时候，当地政府都是出动警力，采取高压手段.

Another problem they have over there is general lawlessness: illegal or “black” taxis, gambling dens, etc. Most of the young people are in some form of gang. The police report that members of at least six gangs were involved in the June 28 events. The article says that women have their own “gangs,” one of which is called the “Auntie Society” (姨妈会).

I haven’t read this article that in-depth, but it does manage to paint an interesting and much more subtle picture of Weng’an and the surrounding areas than we got at first. While other media outlets mention it mostly as some kind of vague anti-CCP anger, there is so much more in it. There are criminal elements, general lawlessnes, and yes, anger at the government that seems to be good at ignoring certain problems and exploiting other problems to their advantage. I don’t envy the people that have to live there.