LinkChinese UK News

BBC reports:

A man has appeared in court charged with the murders of a Chinese couple at their flat in Newcastle.

The mutilated bodies of Zhen Xing Yang and his girlfriend Xi Zhou, both 25, were discovered in their home in Croydon Road on 9 August.

Guang Hui Cao, 30, of Castle Close, Morpeth, was remanded in custody during a hearing at Newcastle Magistrates’ Court on Monday.

He is now due to appear before the city’s crown court on 10 November.

Two other men arrested in connection with the killings have been bailed pending further inquiries.

 

Minister tells Times of urgent need for policy change to ease racial tension.
Richard Ford, Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson report on Times

Strict limits are to be imposed on immigration amid fears that unemployment rises in the economic downturn will fuel racial tension.

Phil Woolas, in his first interview since taking over as Immigration Minister, said that he wanted to see a dramatic reduction in the number of migrants coming to Britain.

In what many will see as extraordinary remarks for a Labour minister, he told The Times that the economic backdrop changed everything. “If people are being made unemployed, the question of immigration becomes extremely thorny . . . It’s been too easy to get into this country in the past and it’s going to get harder,” he said.

Ministers intended to introduce changes to allow it to set a limit on migration, he said. “This Government isn’t going to allow the population to go up to 70 million. There has to be a balance between the number of people coming in and the number of people leaving.”

Read the full story

 

Lu Ning’s comment first appered on the Guardian.

While the financial crisis is deepening and spreading, attention is turning to the east. A cartoon in the Australian shows a character saying that western capitalists are looking for eastern socialists to save them.

To Kevin Rudd, the Australian prime minister, this is not a joke. He argued during a Radio Australia interview that the steady growth of China’s economy would be extremely helpful for getting Australia out of the financial crisis.

According to the International Monetary Fund’s economic forecast published last week, most western countries are facing recession next year, while China’s economy will keep growing at 9%. Rudd believes this is good news for Australia. China’s demands for ore, coal and other materials has fuelled the growth of Australia in the recent years. At the moment, China is Australia’s largest trading partner.

Last week’s announcement of interest rates cuts by China was part of a coordinated effort by the world’s central banks. It was seen by most media commentators not as a necessary step to protect China’s financial system, but as a signal showing China’s willingness to take more responsibilities on the international stage.

It is obvious to China that in economic, political and diplomatic terms, it is now in good position in relation to Australia, US and Europe.

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Interval II  - Suki Chan’s beautiful new film installation exploring our transient relationship to the built environment – showing at Chinese Arts Centre until 22 December 2008

Interval II is a high definition tryptich film installation examining the traces of human presence between two contrasting landscapes: a cast-iron pier on the northwest coast of England and a traditional Hakka roundhouse in southwest China. Using light, sound and moving image, Interval II presents a poetic portrait of the significance within the architectures and invite the viewer to slow down and contemplate our relationship to the world around us.

(more…)

 

From the UK Food Standards Agency:

The Food Standards Agency is today alerting the public about a brand of biscuits from China on sale in the UK that have been found to contain low levels of melamine (4.98 mg/kg).

Batches of 49g packets of Koala brand biscuits manufactured by Lotte China Foods Co. are being withdrawn from sale and their destruction arranged by local authorities. The product has been distributed to Chinese supermarkets and other independent retailers across the UK.

All products from China containing more than 15% milk as an ingredient, or products where the percentage of milk content cannot be established, are currently subject to documentary, identity and physical checks, including laboratory analysis, to determine that any levels of melamine present in the product do not exceed 2.5 mg/kg. Those products with more than 2.5mg/kg will be destroyed.

Product details

The products being withdrawn are all batch codes of:

* Koala Chocolate Cookies 49g
* Koala Strawberry Cookies 49g
* Koala Yummie Cookies Chestnut 49g
* Koala Melon Cookies 49g

 

Chinese artist Wang Guangyi’s work features in a show of contemporary Chinese art at the new Saatchi Gallery in London that opens on 9 Oct 2008.

From Saatchi Gallery website:

Classified in China under the genre of Political Pop, Wang Guangyi’s paintings combine the ideological power of communist propaganda with the seductive allure of advertising. Juxtaposing revolutionary images with consumer logos, Wang’s canvases provocate with their duplicitous message, highlighting the conflict between China’s political past and commercialised present. Stylistically merging the government enforced aesthetic of agitprop with the kitsch sensibility of American pop, Guangyi’s work adopts the cold-war language of the 60s to ironically examine the contemporary polemics of globalisation.

Through his critique, Guangyi’s paintings weave intricate narratives, implicating the role of the artist as an active participant (both as subjugator and subservient) in economic and social policy. Guangyi treads a very delicate line between moral dictum and capitalist endorsement; the interpretation of his paintings alternates with the subjectivity of context. Amalgamating, confusing, and blurring opposing ideological beliefs, Guangyi’s billboard sized canvases readily sell out national valour, while simultaneously devaluing status symbol luxury for the proletariat cause.