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Spring of the water dragon
The metal rabbit is running out of steam, midnight between January 22 and January 23 we enter the year of the water dragon, a good year to be born, according to Chinese astrology. Enter the dragons: A baby boom for Chinese across Asia
Originally posted by BBC:
''One downfall of the dragon baby boom is that this will put a lot of pressure on hospitals, kindergartens and schools in China,'' said Dr Zhang Yanxia, a visiting research fellow at the East Asian Institute in Singapore.
Mainland Chinese mothers already go to Hong Kong to deliver their babies to circumvent the one-child policy, and for rights of abode and education for their child. Last weekend, Hong Kong mothers with pushchairs staged a protest, amid fears of a further influx. Authorities have taken steps to limit the number of deliveries by mainlanders and foreigners in both public and private hospitals.
But the boom is not expected to last. Coming years - especially the year of the snake in 2013 - will likely see a decline in births.
Sunday January 22 (New Year's Eve): Time for family dinner and watching big show TV. Fish is served, but the dish to eat around midnight is dumplings (jiaozi 饺子), bringing good fortune for the new year. Besides they taste just grreat.
Monday January 23 (New Year's Day): Fireworks and food, and visiting the oldest ones in the family.
Tuesday January 24: Day for married daughters to visit their parents.
January 25 and 26: Bad days to visit family and friends, quarrels may ensue.
Friday 27: Another good day to eat dumplings (jiaozi 饺子).
Saturday 28: Happy birthday everyone! Today you all get one year older.
Monday 30: Today the jade emperor gets one year older. A good excuse to eat another good family dinner. This is the official end of the spring festival, not that anybody cares.
Wednesday February 1. Today the jade emperor gets one year older.
Saturday 4. Today is the day to eat vegetarian food after all the heavy food you have eaten the previous days.
Monday 6. Lantern Festival. Another festival. Nice day for a walk with your lantern.
Tuesday 7. Now it's back to work for the rest of the year.
Originally posted by Agence France-Presse:
You don't have to be a "wind and water master" to predict that 2012 would be a tumultuous year, with presidential elections in the US, Russia, India, and de facto in China this year. And those things have their shares of losers as well, saddled with one scandal or the other.But be prepared for surprises, especially out of China where the Communist Party will hold its 18th Congress to select a new generation of leaders.
"In the second half of the year, a scandalous corruption case will be exposed in China," warns Cheng, refusing to elaborate about who will be implicated. "I can also predict that in Hong Kong and in mainland China, a number of high-ranking officials will be forced to step down. Some may be thrown behind bars, or even pass away."
Many Chinese take such predictions seriously and adjust their lives accordingly. Feng shui, the ancient study of the forces of chi, or life energy, is a daily part of life in the Chinese world.
One of Hong Kong's largest brokerages, CLSA, releases a Feng Shui Index every year, offering its "tongue-in-cheek" predictions for global markets and world affairs. Lest anyone takes it seriously, CLSA admits that feng shui's "original purpose was to locate auspicious burial spots, not call the twists and turns of the equity markets or individual sectors."
But it has a stab anyway, even if some of its predictions are less than audacious. For example, it says the stars point to a "job opening" for Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, the man everyone expects to become China's next ruler after the 18th Congress in October or November.
Originally posted by jax:
with presidential elections […] de facto in China this year
Surely, you meant de jure?
"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
(iBook G4 - Panther) Opera 9.64 (5270), 10.10 (6795)
"I have heard it remarked that men are not to be reasoned out of an opinion they have not reasoned themselves into." Fisher Ames
The election of President next year (largely a figurehead position and a formality) will be de jure.
Originally posted by FT:
China’s Communist party leadership is preparing for a once in a decade transition but a political storm has erupted that could upset succession plans and end one of the country’s most promising political careers.
A mafia-busting former police chief called Wang Lijun spent more than 24 hours last week in the US consulate in the city of Chengdu arguing that his life was at risk after a rift with Bo Xilai, his boss and Communist party secretary of Chongqing municipality.[/url]
Originally posted by jax:
Crucially the Politburo and other real power structures will be replaced, so this is a major transition, the Party equivalent of "the king is dead, long live the king."
I always thought that was "kink"!
Music to my ears.
Don't try this in Safari... it don't got no flash.
Iswifter works fine.
Originally posted by jax:
Negative campaigning with Chinese characteristics: Chinese princeling Bo Xilai comes under pressure
And now he's gone
Originally posted by BBC:
In the closed world of Chinese politics, it is sometimes difficult to spot defining moments - but Bo Xilai's removal from office is certainly one. He is a suave and sophisticated politician - a member of the Chinese Communist Party's politburo who had been tipped for even higher office.
The party meets later this year for its 18th congress to reshuffle its top leaders. Many thought Mr Bo would be promoted to the politburo's standing committee, the country's highest decision-making body. That ambition now looks to be over with news that he has been replaced as party boss in the city of Chongqing.
There is currently a battle taking place within the high reaches of the party about who will lead it in the coming decade. This is the opening shot in that campaign - and suggests it will be a tough fight. [...]
All eyes were on this year's meeting of parliament, a chance to see all of China's top politicians together. How would Mr Bo act? The 62-year-old is a flamboyant politician, sending his son to the UK's exclusive private school Harrow. But at this meeting he took an unusually low profile.
He missed a full meeting of parliament - the only member of the communist party's politburo to do so. His excuse that he had a "cough" sounded feeble. A meeting of Chongqing delegates to the parliament, an event usually open to the press, was then mysteriously restricted to just a handful of reporters.
The central party authorities had still not commented, though, which left some wondering whether Mr Bo could weather the storm. But then came a news conference by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, held at the end of the parliamentary session. He took - and answered - a direct question on the Wang Lijun incident.
"The present Chongqing municipal party committee and the municipal government must reflect seriously and learn from the Wang Lijun incident," he said. It was phrased in the language of bureaucracy used here in China, and Bo Xilai's name was not mentioned, but the country's premier had just publicly criticised the Chongqing party chief. Mr Wen went further, suggesting his dislike for "red" campaigns. Was this another rebuff for Bo Xilai? It probably was.
I watched that press conference, it ran on live national tv, and enjoyed that well-aimed discreet dagger. Wen is on his way out as well though. It is going to be an interesting campaign ahead.
Originally posted by jax:
Another Chinese festival today: qingming festival, or tomb-sweeping-day, a day to celebrate spring and the dead.
That's interesting, usually spring is related with life, the eternal reborn. Many cultures celebrates spring and dead but separately. I think that's the first time I heard about celebrating it together.
Originally posted by jax:
In today's Bo Xilai news, his wife has been arrested for murder of a English consultant, Neil Haywood, who had worked with a company with MI6 ties. That little scandal puts a definite end to Mr. Bo''s run for the Politburo standing committee.And now he's gone
Originally posted by BBC:
But there are more people still in the running, Business Insider has helpfully listed 13 of them. Meanwhile Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reports that People's Daily has given Yu Zhengsheng (fourth on BI's list) "lavish praise":The woman accused of involvement in the murder of a British businessman has been described as the "Jackie Kennedy of China".
A US lawyer who worked with Gu Kailai several years ago told the BBC that she was attractive, charismatic and funny. Ed Byrne, from Denver in Colorado, said he was "shocked" to hear that she was embroiled in a murder investigation.
Originally posted by SCMP:
"Shanghai, which has always been at the forefront of reform and opening up, has yet again held aloft the banners of deepening reform and opening its doors wider to the outside world," the piece said. [...]
Although analysts said it was too early to tell if Yu could be elevated to the nine-member-strong Politburo Standing Committee, they agreed that the party newspaper's was unusual and politically significant for the rising star. [...]
Veteran China watcher Johnny Lau Yui-siu also cautioned that the significance of the article should not be overstated. "Although the article sings the praises of Yu, it could also represent an official verdict on Yu before his possible imminent retirement," Lau said.
China's worried enough about the information going out on the U.S.-based Chinese language site Boxun.com that it apparently took the trouble to knock the site offline, so now we're going to add Boxun to our list of sites worth reading about the Bo Xilai scandal. Thanks for the confirmation, China! Boxun, which has reported extensively on the Bo scandal, went dark for a few hours on Friday in a denial of service attack, which it says came from China's security services. The site now live on a new server.
The flurry of rumor and speculation from which reporters have to decipher news in the absence of official communication can be baffling, one China correspondent told The Atlantic Wire via telephone last week. There's a lot of information out there, much of it wrong, and almost none of it ever confirmed by Chinese officials. Reporters have to to go on what they can learn by people inside the power structure, and those sources can be cagey. Remember when people weren't totally clear about whether there was a coup in China, or when Reuters mentioned a fax it had sent to police to try to confirm something? A fax!
Now, we can't confirm for sure that the Chinese government knocked Boxun offline, but that's what Boxun says, and as The Associated Press points out, "foreign governments and companies often complain of cyber-attacks from China, although proving their origins and who the culprits are is rarely possible. Beijing denies that it uses hackers to attack web sites or steal secrets online."
Beijing also rarely denies or confirms rumors, but it does take action against them by censoring key words on sites like Weibo, China's Twitter equivalent, as it did following a mysterious Beijing car crash in March. When rumors hit the Web that an official in Chongqing had confessed to providing cyanide to Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, for the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood, "they were not immediately censored, leading analysts to believe they were officially sanctioned leaks," The Australian's Michael Sheridan reported.
So far Boxun, which once took funding from the U.S. government-backed National Endowment for Democracy (but doesn't anymore), has a decent but not stellar track record with its reporting, The AP notes: "Not all of Boxun's reports have held water, but many of those alleging Gu's involvement in the Heywood death and Bo's falling-out with [former Chonqing police chief] Wang [Lijun] have since been proven true or been corroborated by other sources."
Today Boxun is reporting what it says is an inside account of a Communist Party crackdown on Bo Xilai's allies, and another "exclusive" about how Wang feared for his life when he fled to the U.S. consulate in February, kicking off the scandal. Now that the site's been targeted, it looks like China's doing what it can to prevent the release of information that it doesn't want out. And that makes us want to read it all the more.
Originally posted by jax:
In today's Bo Xilai news, his wife has been arrested for murder of a English consultant, Neil Haywood, who had worked with a company with MI6 ties. That little scandal puts a definite end to Mr. Bo''s run for the Politburo standing committee.
WSJ has followed up on the MI6 allegations, Briton Killed in China Had Spy Links
Neither Chinese nor British officials have suggested Mr. Heywood was killed because of his MI6 links. A Chinese court found Ms. Gu guilty in August of killing him because she thought he threatened her son over a business dispute, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
However, friends of Mr. Heywood and prominent Chinese figures have pointed out omissions, ambiguities and inconsistencies in the official account of his killing presented by state media.
And when Mr. Wang fled to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu on Feb. 6, he told U.S. diplomats there that Ms. Gu had confessed to him that she "killed a spy," according to one person who has seen a transcript of what Mr. Wang said.
While this may be more earth dragon than water dragon news, or maybe more appropriate for the coming year, the year of the snake, Beijing has now the largest metro system in the world, though the capital will soon be beaten by Shanghai.This is particularly impressive given that a decade ago Beijing hardly had a metro system.
Air: 34 million
Rail: 220 million
Road: 2847 million
Boat: 42 million
In other words well over three billion trips, the vast majority by cars and busses, and this number is increasing fast.
The year of the water dragon nears its end, to be replaced by the year of the water snake (followed a year later with the wood horse), midnight between February 9 and February 10, Beijing time.. If you enjoyed this year, the next water dragon year will be in 2072. The Chinese Spring Festival is in full swing, right now China is not working (some of them may still be on the move).
Valentine's Day is just around the corner, but it might be best not to get your hopes up too much. According to one feng shui master, the Year of the Water Snake is a good year financially, but not for romance. "For relationships, people should not expect too much in this year. They should concentrate on work," geomancer Joseph Chau said during a press conference at Mandarin Oriental [luxury hotel] on January 28.