The Great Firewall of China

The Google China censorship debate continues to rage across the board...

Google's China Problem (and China's Google Problem) from the NY Times

Google in China makes sense, says the BBC's tech guru Bill Thompson

Billionaire Bill Gates says the Internet "is contributing to Chinese political engagement" as "access to the outside world is preventing more censorship" - from The Times

Beijing joins global war on smoking

Believe me, there's no faster way to insult a Beijing cab driver (apart from, maybe, fastening your seat belt - shame on you for not trusting his judgement, that lorry came out of nowhere!) than to turn down one of his "Double Happiness" cigarettes.

In China, offering a stranger one of your cigarettes is a national gesture of goodwill, comparable in the West to bringing your new neighbours a home-baked basket of blueberry muffins. Even if you don't smoke (something totally incomprehensible to the average Chinese), for heavens sake, just take it anyway. It's not like you're expected to inhale. It's considered bad manners not too. Worse, actually, it's just plain rude.

In a country where a packet of twenties can cost as little as 5p and lightening up in between courses at mealtimes is the social norm, China comes pretty close to the chain-smokers notion of heaven. 320 million Chinese smoke and there are no negative stigma's attached to smoking at all. In fact, you can pretty much light up anywhere - in taxis, on trains, in the cinema, in hospitals...

This is all about to change, however, as Beijing announced today their intentions to control existing tobacco production, including taxes on the tobacco leaf.

From Dublin to New York, recent years has seen many governments adopt new laws to clamp down on smoking in public places. In the UK, a resolution passed in the House of Commons this Valentine's Day called for a ban on smoking in all pubs and restaurants by summer 2007.

Although China is still a very long way from introducing such measures, I have to wonder, how will Beijing's cabbies take to the governments new proposals?

Google image search for Tiananmen vs Chinese version

Google.cn - Just don't be surprised by what you can't find

One particularly sticky afternoon in August, some years ago, I walked into an Internet cafe in Beijing. There wasn't a PLA soldier in sight. Still, there were plenty of signs on the walls that reminded users that the seemingly borderless world of the Internet was not beyond the control of the Communist state's mighty censors. "Do not visit harmful websites", read one.

Yesterday, the Internet search engine Google launched its Chinese counterpart: Google.cn - but with limits, of course. Google.cn will block all links deemed inappropriate by the central government. This means that searches such as "Falungong", "Taiwan independence" and "Democracy" will be denied access, and you can forget about trying to access the Beeb online. Google will also not be offering Gmail or weblog services on the mainland until further notice.

The Chinese Internet market - with an online population of 111 million and growing - has proved impossible for most Western companies to resist. Take Microsoft or Yahoo as a case in point. Last year, Yahoo came under heavy fire for handing over the email account information of Chinese journalist Shi Tao to the authorities. Shi, who had circulated a government memo calling for all media commemorations of the 15th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown to be supressed, was later jailed for 10 years.

From a personal point of view, Google should at least consider revising their corporate philosophy ("Do No Evil"), even if their notion of evil is not entirely clear.

Yao Ming has surgery on toe, out several weeks

It has been noted that the editor of this blog has been missing in action for several weeks (thanks to a rather lame injury sustained on her left toe)...

Apparently, it's quite a common ailment, which can even render super-colossal, basketball stars helpless for weeks...

Democracy in Hong Kong: Passed it's sell-by date?

In a free and sovereign state, democracy is the favoured method of selecting rulers. Discuss.

The siege of Wanchai

A demonstrator is carried off by riot police on Gloucester Road, Wanchai

Police spray protestors with water

Kungfu Hustle II











WTO activists kutow on the street outside the Japanese-owned SOGO department store, Causeway Bay

Fake Viagra ring facing prosecution

In Beijing's Silk Street market, you can buy a first-rate fake (otherwise known as a "super A-grade" immitation) Louis Vuitton monogrammed bag for as little as 20 Yuan (roughly equivalent to 1.5 GBP, or the price of a small, frothy cappucino from Costa). Not only designer goods are faked, but virtually every consumer product imaginable from Panadol, to Coca-cola, Marlboro lights, and now it would seem, even Viagra...

Showdown in the Kong?

About 4,000 anti-globalisation campaigners marched in the first of a string of protests against the WTO in Hong Kong yesterday. Carrying banners and shouting slogans: "Junk WTO. Our world is not for sale!" the demonstrators snaked through the streets of the city in what was largely a festive and peaceful affair.

The six-day conference, to commence tomorrow (13 Dec), has seen the Hong Kong governments propaganda machine in full force, as it attempts to instill a climate of fear in the territory, so as to mask any crackdowns on dissent and to detract attention from the real issues at stake.

As of tomorrow, schools will be cancelled, small businesses shut, and sections of the city cordoned off to the public, as the police are placed on round-the-clock high alert. In a city, where it is possible to venture out at 3am, on a public holiday, in the middle of a typhoon, to buy cigarettes from a roadside vendor, this is nothing short of a phenomenon.

The Hong Kong media are only adding fuel to the fire, as day after day the local press, radio and television stations are saturated with widely exaggerated stories about violence, suicide, and militant Korean farmers...



We're ready
Police and security officials declared themselves ready and waiting as they barricaded Wan Chai in preparation for Tuesday's start of the Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference.

(The Standard, 10 Dec 2005)

Read on


WTO summit fuels protests fears
Radical protesters smashing shop windows and club-wielding police often grab the spotlight at WTO summits, and -- with 10,000 demonstrators expected -- fears are that similar violence will bedevil next week's WTO meeting in Hong Kong.

(The Taipei Times, 7 Dec 2005)

Read on

Ladies and Gents, we have a perfect match!

Prisons seek translators for activists

As the SAR prepares to host the WTO's 6th Ministerial Conference next Tuesday (13 Dec), government sources reveal:

Hong Kong's prison authorities are hiring translators for what they believe may be a 24-hours-a-day procession of people being detained for breaking public order laws during the World Trade Organization talks...

(The Standard, 16 Nov 2005)

Ever ready to do its charitable bit for the community, Deepfried Dumpling is proud to present Teach Yourself Chinglish. Intended as a guide to help all potential "foreign" demonstrators decipher Canto-speak, should they have the misfortune to rub noses with a member of the HK Police Force or Correctional Services.

Teach Yourself Chinglish: As easy as one, two, free...!

1. Wei, ID ah! - "Can you show me your identity document?"

2. You from where? - "What nationality are you?"

3. What you do? - "What is the intended purpose of your stay and will you just go home already?"

4. Gwailow - "White ghost"; generic or belligerent (depending on the tone of voice) term for foreigners

5. Gwaipoh - female gwailow

6. I dunno- "I don't know what you're talking about and even if I did, I wouldn't tell you..."

7. I no speak Inglish - "I still don't know what you're talking about and even if I did, I still wouldn't tell you..."

8. You no stay here! - "Piss off, before I drag you down a dark, deserted alley and slap you silly!"

God help us all, apparently, even Barbra Streisand is doing it.

Ya reckon old Don got the message?

An estimated quarter of a million people took to the streets on Sunday to march for democracy in Hong Kong. Shouts of Po Syun! - Universal Suffrage! - ricketed across the island although, apparently, the cries for democracy were not loud enough to be heard over the border, as the Mainland Chinese press carried no news of the demonstration.

The people of Hong Kong are among the world's most highly-educated, affluent and skilled. Yet under the agreement brokered by the British and Chinese governments before the handover in 1997, only half (30 out of 60) of the legislative seats are chosen in direct one-person-one-vote elections. And Hong Kong's chief executive is chosen by an 800-member election committee, mainly made up of pro-Beijing conservatives.

Hong Kong's mini-constitution, the Basic Law, calls for the system to become more representative and democratic "in a gradual and orderly" manner. But the law is vague about the timing of changes.

We live in an age where citizens in such far-flung, wartorn places as Liberia, Iraq, and Afghanistan are all heading to the polls. Surely, Sunday's pro-democracy march is proof that the Hong Kongnese feel it is about time that they too be allowed to have an active say in their future.

"Little Sweetie" wins battle of the will

Asia's richest woman, Nina Wang, proves that nowadays even a cool $5bn can't buy you decent hair or a good plastic surgeon...