LinkChinese UK News

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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Alice Lee wrote a comment on the Guardian about Anna May Wong and the struggle of Chinese actors/actresses are facing now. Alice Lee’s play Dragon Lady: Being Anna May Wong was on this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

China’s forgotten star

Alice Lee

In 1905, a little Chinese girl, Wong Liu Tsong, was born in America. In the 1930s, she became the first American Chinese film star to achieve international acclaim – as the exquisite Anna May Wong. Although she made over 60 movies and mesmerised audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, she is now largely forgotten. Renowned for stealing scenes from her fellow actors, Wong never ascended to the exalted positions achieved by her fellow actresses Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. More surprising still, most modern Chinese people have never heard of her. I can’t help but wonder: is the reason an innate human tendency to bury sad stories? Or is it because we do not want to stir up a storm by examining the issues and realising how little we have advanced?

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By Pin Lu from WaterInk.

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By Pin Lu, on WaterInk.

The Olympics has truly become showbiz when the headline is an adoring young girl lip-synced a song by another young girl at the opening ceremony. In the director’s mind, the girl with the best voice has to have the cutest complexion as well. The more baffling part is the director of music of the opening ceremony, Chen Qigang, only revealed this fact as one of the “behind the scene” stories when being interviewed on the radio, as if giving away some “making of” extra like those coming with a film’s DVD releases.
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Jiang Yuebing is a literature professor in Hubei province.

Beating the Stolen Gong

Jiang Yuebing

Some neighbors of our China are so much interested in Chinese culture that they decided most important ancient Chinese inventions like Chinese medicine or seismograph actually theirs. I appreciate their interest to our culture, yet wonder if they also found this piece, which is an ancient Chinese saying, “A stolen gong can’t be beaten!”

Because SBS (Seoul Broadcasting System) were bold enough to beat the stolen gong. On July the 16th the SBS kinescoped secretly the first

rehearsal of the opening ceremony of Beijing Olympic Games, and by the 30th more than 2 minutes of the kinescope was broadcasted by SBS.

Many Chinese people were angry at this astonishing behavior. And I just don’t understand why they did it. Yes their must offer their audiences the most attractive news, but why did they not think of the results of it? Couldn’t they see that they were beating the stolen gong just to discredit themselves?  As a Chinese I feel so pity for the poor SBS.

I am sure their disgraceful act will do no real harm to Beijing Olympic Games. I am sure Chinese people will enjoy the opening ceremony, and I believe people around the world would appreciate the performance too. I feel a bit at easy knowing that SBS has made their apology. We should accept that.
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Jake Xu wrote today on the Guardian’s Comment is Free about his email exchange with Swedish Red Cross Youth about their human rights campaign’s misuse of photos. Jake Xu is an active member of LKCN Chinese Forum.

Overstretching credibility on China
Jake Xu

This summer, Swedish Red Cross Youth (RKUF) launched a global campaign to encourage people to discuss China’s human rights record. (Note that, in July, the campaign was pulled by the Red Cross HQ in Geneva.) For the campaign, RKUF chose five photographs apparently showing Chinese police attacking protestors. Each picture was then marked with a pictogram representing an Olympic sport. The ads carried the line: “Arranging the Olympic games is not a human right. Continue the discussion at RKUF.se.”

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Marcel Berlins on the Guardian:

The Chinese population of South Africa suffered much discrimination under apartheid. They were not treated as badly as were black South Africans, but were still subject to many indignities and prohibitions. They fought hard against their second-class status and eventually, even before the end of apartheid, most of the legal barriers were removed or disregarded.

So there was something ironically surreal in last week’s decision by South Africa’s high court that the Chinese - at their own request - should be classified as black. The motive was financial - access to various black economic empowerment schemes available to the victims of apartheid. To qualify, they had to be regarded as black. Hence the court case.

 

Pin Lu on WaterInk.net

Joanna Lumley complained on Channel 4 News that her peaceful protest on the day of Olympic torch relay in London was almost ignored by the media. On the other side, many Chinese students voiced the frustration of that their show of support, a pro-Olympic torch demonstration if you like, despite turning up in large numbers, was barely mentioned by BBC News 24, who broadcasted most part of the torch reply. It is understandable that stunts, especially violent stunts, always attract more media attention, however I do wonder whether those they tried to grab the torch, or throw themselves to the torch bearers, or ambush the torch with a fire extinguisher, were risking losing their case. Not only they overshadowed their colleagues who insisted on peaceful demonstration, some action, like the one happened in Paris during which several men charged from all directions, wave after wave, towards a disabled torch bearer sitting on a wheel chair in order to grab her torch (well before the flame lit up), did not do any good PR for the movement’s ‘non-violent’ image.

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Pin Lu on WaterInk.net

Among many commentaries about what happened in Tibet and what would happen at Beijing Olympics, some groups advocate either boycotting Beijing Olympics altogether or at least the opening ceremony, or encouraging athletics openly demonstrate during the Games, wearing a Free Tibet t-shirt while competing for example. To see what kind of reaction their proposed action may get, one can do worse than checking the response from the eighty thousand or so Chinese students in the UK. Although most of them won’t hesitate to criticise Chinese government’s handling of events, such as a blind ban of the foreign media, many believe the western media are equally biased and untrustworthy. On the overseas Chinese discussion boards, there have been heated debate, mainly among overseas Chinese students themselves, about whether Tibetan are treated well enough, and how strained the relationship between Tibetan and Han-Chinese is, however most of the participants see Tibet as an integral part of China, many also accuse western media as being one-sided or even fabricating in reporting the violence in Tibet. A seven minute video posted onto YouTube (has been viewed near two million times) reflects the feeling shared by many Chinese students.

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Nancy Zhang wrote in Shanghai Daily, reacting to the Sunday Times’s report of some British schools’ unofficial policy of capping the number of pupils from China. She accused the school of deploying a policy that discriminates against Chinese students.

The Sunday Times reported that some private schools, including Wellington College in Berkshire, the Leys school in Cambridge and Brighton college, East Sussex, have decided to restrict their numbers of foreign pupils. The informal limit ranges from 8% to 20%. The schools argues that they must preserve the Britishness of the school, which was also expressed by some of the parents, according to the schools.

The numbers from mainland China have risen from a few hundred in 2000 to 2,345 this year. When added to pupils from Hong Kong, the total rises to 8,652, 40% of all foreign pupils.

UK schools discriminate against Chinese students, by Nancy Zhang:

Last month an article appeared in “The Sunday Times” about unofficial quotas some British schools have on the number of Chinese pupils they will admit.

This was preceded by another article the week before with the headline “Chinese students oust UK pupils from top universities.”

It seems there is a growing pattern in Western countries like the United Kingdom, where the Chinese in particular are seen to be infringing on that most valuable and socially crucial resource: education.

Ostensibly the schools claim these quotas are a practical issue of business-need. The schools mentioned were highly elite, private schools - traditionally a bastion of British life stretching back to the days of the empire.

The argument provided by the schools is that both foreign and British parents, their customers, come to these schools for a distinctly “British” education, so it is in the interests of both to keep numbers of Chinese below 10 percent and thus maintain their original character.

But I wonder if they would say the same if the incoming 10 percent of foreign students were white American or European. Or, on the other hand, if they would welcome a large number of legally British pupils who were ethnically Chinese.

Full article.