In
China, the sparrow's deadliest enemy is farmers' haphazard and extravagant use of pesticides. They're disappearing from the countryside. Sometimes they "reappear on sticks, skewered and roasted or fried." Yum-yum.
posted by phartizan
on Apr 10, 2002 -
1 comment
Japanese Devils is a documentary featuring 14 veterans of the Imperial Army testifying to their brutal participation in Japan's 15-year war against China. Director Matsui Minoru presents a powerful historical record of these soldiers' individual crimes, helping to break Japan's long silence about its wartime atrocities in China.
Please also see
Iris Chang's "The Rape of Nanking'' and be aware that the Japanese government is
still whitewashing their brutal WWII history via
school textbooks. We must understand the truth of history so that we are not doomed to repeat it.
posted by gen
on Apr 4, 2002 -
5 comments
Space, Here We Come! The Chinese make significant progress in their quest for the stars. A good bit of
background from Wired explains that they're leveraging off of Russian tech but China still considered the program their
#1 sci-tech advance last year. As an aside, some nice
spy pictures are available of the Jiuquan Space Facility although I imagine it's been a developed a bit since then.
So, will getting a man into space signficantly change the world's opinion of China as it slowly evolves in a major world player? For Americans, will it be
1957 all over
again except the little
beep beep is replaced by a Chinese man waving back at them?
posted by warhol
on Mar 26, 2002 -
27 comments
North Koreans would rather drink poison than return Refugees seek asylum at the Spanish embassy in China.
"We are now at the point of such desperation and live in such fear of persecution within North Korea that we have come to the decision to risk our lives for freedom rather than passively await our doom," the group's statement said.
"Some of us carry poison on our person to commit suicide if the Chinese authorities should choose once again to send us back to North Korea," the statement said.
posted by norm29
on Mar 14, 2002 -
7 comments
Did China circumnavigate the globe before Magellan?
"When explorer Christopher Columbus landed in America in 1492, he was 72 years behind a Chinese expeditionary force, which had already made its way to the area.
And although Captain James Cook was credited with discovering Australia for the British Empire in 1770, the Chinese had mapped the island continent 337 years earlier."
All this was accomplished by a castrated eunuch named Zheng He.
What do you think?
posted by AsiaInsider
on Mar 4, 2002 -
33 comments
Who Lost China's Internet?
Here's a problem for your American company. You want access to the lucrative and growing Chinese information technology market but the Chinese government is demanding some questionable things from you. If you're Cisco you bend over backwards to make your routers filter subversive content. If you're Network Solutions you donate 300 viruses to study. If you're Yahoo! then you censor chat rooms, filter searches, and underreport your traffic. But if you're Microsoft you refuse to cough up your source code and call their bluff. Strangely, that puts Microsoft, The Voice of America, and the Cult of the Dead Cow on the same side. (via
Peek-a-Booty)
posted by euphorb
on Mar 3, 2002 -
11 comments
Dr. Paul Linebarger became a
spy for the U.S. Intelligence community because he was an expert in propaganda, psychological warfare, and the culture of China. In his
other secret life, however, he wrote some of the most
wildly inventive and
unusual science fiction ever, forming a history of mankind and its
Instrumentality that spanned fifteen thousand years. To protect his identity, he published under the name
Cordwainer Smith.
posted by Hildago
on Feb 21, 2002 -
15 comments
Corporate censorship in China (via slashdot). I guess censorship and collusion in the repression of people is okay if you're making profits for your shareholders. An eye-opening look into the way that corporations are helping to facilitate censorship on the Internet in China. AOL and Yahoo's attitudes to what I thought were universal human rights is nothing short of sickening.
posted by pixelgeek
on Feb 18, 2002 -
8 comments
Speaking of bibles, a man gets
2 years in prison in China for smuggling them to an underground Christian organization. Nothing like religious tolerance.
posted by catatonic
on Jan 28, 2002 -
85 comments
Ever wonder what it would be like to live in a model communist Chinese village? Apartments come in only two sizes. Residents are bound by strict rules. The approval of a Communist Party committee is required for all marriages. A mass wedding is held once a year on New Year's Day.
After childbirth women are sterilised. Wrongdoers are paraded through the village with their heads shaved. The village has acquired cult status among those who still pine for the certainties of the Mao era
posted by Rastafari
on Jan 14, 2002 -
8 comments
this is very odd indeed chinese news media's flash tribute for the WTC tragedy
rough translation for the song:
elderly american goes to work
was very frightened
someone drove a plane into the building
and it fell down
but he was very fit
so he ran down 937 stairs and got away
the news people asked him to say a few words
that was all he could say
he said someone crashed a plane into the building
they were terrorists
this is bad because it affects ordinary people
posted by quarsan
on Dec 10, 2001 -
15 comments
So some tigers in China aren't getting any action when they should be. As a
last ditch effort, they will be given the miracle drug, Viagra. Just for kicks, who thinks it'll work? (side note: the last paragraph in the article lends a whole new meaning to "Discovery Channel")
posted by dai
on Dec 6, 2001 -
12 comments
Chinese planning on going to the moon. I know some would like to see the US return the moon. Some think it was all staged in a big hoax, but could a joint US/Chinese mission be possible by say 2010? What companies in China are working to make this possible? Would having Russia next door make the program any better? Personally, I'm glad to see someone will be returning to the moon.
posted by brent
on Nov 23, 2001 -
24 comments
New
Discovery in Northern China challenges theory on origin of man. Human activities started in Asia some 2 million years ago long before Out of Africa.
posted by stbalbach
on Nov 11, 2001 -
11 comments
Speaking of Tokyo Rose: AOL/Time Warner, with assistance from the Bush administration, signed a "landmark deal" with China. AOL/TW gets to broadcast a Chinese-language station in the area of China that already gets Western programming (although illegally), and in exchange AOL/TW agrees to broadcast a Chinese state sponsored English language channel in Los Angeles, New York and Houston. "We are very pleased to have achieved this landmark agreement, which represents a significant step in the growing relationship between AOL Time Warner and the people of China," said CEO Gerald Levin in a statement. Why does this make my skin crawl?
posted by bclark
on Oct 23, 2001 -
17 comments
China bans Muslims from flights. Don't like America's solution for airline safety? Try this. I wonder if this policy is temporary, and timed for President Bush's imminent visit to the region, or is this China's long-term solution?
How will America respond - condemnation or tacit acceptance? Does it actually make Bush's trip safer?
posted by conquistador
on Oct 17, 2001 -
13 comments
They've finally reached an agreement that will allow China to become members of the World Trade Organization. I'm not sure I buy the idea that allowing them in will help "bring domestic political liberalization". Although this probably would have made big news a week ago, it was buried in the Reuters Business News today.
posted by elfgirl
on Sep 15, 2001 -
3 comments
Los Angeles' Curious Role in the Chinese Revolution "The oddest among the group was a sickly, 88-pound hunchback Angeleno who had bad eyesight, an obsession with military glory and more than a touch of genius."
I can't describe this one. More interesting than anything Hollywood ever dreams up, that's for sure.
posted by drunkkeith
on Sep 2, 2001 -
2 comments
China has sent a bill to the US for $1 million to pay for the time that our spy plane spent sitting on the tarmac in China, waiting for the Chinese to grant permission to get it out of there.
posted by Steven Den Beste
on Jul 6, 2001 -
29 comments
China is on an
'execution frenzy' executing more people 1750+ over the past 3 months then the rest of the world combined over the past 3 years.. according to Amnesty International. The parades and stadiums add a nice Roman-era twist.
posted by stbalbach
on Jul 6, 2001 -
34 comments
China pops back a collective Beano. (NY Times link. Free registration required.)
One of Bush's main objections to the Kyoto protocol is China's exemption from regulation, but it seems they're doing their collective best to cut down on CO2 emissions, with success.
Even with China's rapid rate of expansion, this weakens our administration's argument a bit by setting forward the number of years it will take China to match our own emissions. At what point do we start to play nice with the other kids?
posted by dong_resin
on Jun 16, 2001 -
8 comments
Last summer, lagado posted a
link on some interesting mummies found in a Chinese desert. This is an
article on the ensuing (and continuing) political problems they've caused.
posted by CRS
on May 14, 2001 -
9 comments
UFO spotted? This well may be the new Chinese stealth wave our CIA has been trying to blow away from our shores but to no avail. For the first time, China able to spy on us and to knock down surfers too.
posted by Postroad
on May 10, 2001 -
6 comments
Pssst -- buddy, wanta buy a kidney? There is a regular trade from China of transplant organs taken from executed prisoners. People from the US have been travelling there and buying organs, then coming back to the US. Should we do anything about this, and if so what?
posted by Steven Den Beste
on May 5, 2001 -
21 comments
Hit back at China Move number one: order black berets for the entire army and toss the one they had. Move two: have the new ones made in China. Move three: We are pissed at China so we now destroy all the berets. Is this a government or what?
posted by Postroad
on May 2, 2001 -
17 comments
Oops! "Weren’t
you supposed to watch him?" "Me? I thought
you were watching him."
This is what happens when they let the Shrub pretend he is actually in charge.
posted by mapalm
on Apr 26, 2001 -
47 comments
Corrupt Chinese Officials Plan Escape Routes. Why? Because they believe the collapse of the Chinese government is imminent. Their planning is premature, experts quoted here say. But we all know that experts can often be . . . well, not so expert. Wild headline, to say the least.
posted by raysmj
on Apr 23, 2001 -
36 comments
