MEGAPOST: China’s One Child Policy

Unhappiness Over China’s One Child Policy

February 15, 2012 – China’s one child policy prevents some elder care. CNN’s Matthew Chance reports.

Chinese ‘Apartheid’? Hukou System Comes Under Fire

Published on Feb 1, 2013
Hukou, China’s controversial household registration system, was originally designed to monitor the population and limit mass migration from the countryside to major cities. LinkAsia contributor Mark Dreyer reports that Chinese have taken to social media to voice their complaints about the injustice of the houkou system.

Watch more at http://linkasia.org.

IMAGE: Zhan Haite poses for a picture at home in Shanghai, December 21, 2012. Police broke up a small protest in Beijing on Saturday calling for reform of China’s divisive household registration system, an action prompted by a Shanghai schoolgirl’s widely publicized plea for equal access to the education system:

Action, Awareness Growing for Climate Change in China

Published on Nov 21, 2012 by VOAvideo
China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. It is a manufacturing powerhouse that relies mostly on heavily polluting coal for its ever-expanding energy needs. VOA’s William Ide reports from Beijing that, although the country’s challenges are not getting smaller, awareness of its environmental needs is growing, as are efforts to reduce its carbon emissions.

Explaining China’s Communist Party

Published on Nov 7, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish
The Communist Party Congress is a gathering of China’s most powerful people. One of the key tasks is to announce the Party’s new leadership line-up.

Al Jazeera’s Gerald Tan looks at the structure behind the highly choreographed Congress.

Killed for Organs: China’s Secret State Transplant Business

Published on Oct 20, 2012 by NTDTV
It’s being called “abhorrent” and a “crime against humanity.” Allegations of forced organ harvesting in China started to surface in 2006. Since then, mounting evidence suggests these allegations are true—and even worse than originally suspected.

Prisoners of conscience—especially Falun Gong—are being killed for their organs.

Starting in 1999, the number of transplant centers in China increased by 300% in just 8 years, even though China has no effective national organ donation system. 1999 was the year the Chinese regime began persecuting adherents of the Falun Gong spiritual practice, sending hundreds of thousands to labor camps. Many of them were never seen again.

Transplant medicine was developed to save lives. But in China, innocent people are being killed for their organs—so they can be sold for profit.

Increasingly, doctors, congressmen, international politicians, human rights lawyers, journalists, and people around the world are raising awareness about forced organ harvesting.

Chinese Migrant Worker’s Hilarious Petition Goes Viral

Published on Oct 10, 2012 by NTDTV
It’s an unbelievable piece of satire in a country known for iron-fisted censorship and harsh handling of petitioners. Miao Cuihua, most likely a pseudonym, is doing what countless other migrant workers have done in the past—protest against unpaid wages. But she’s skipped the queue at the petition office. Instead, Miao has created a video that not only demands she receives her quote, “blood and sweat money,” but also mocks the Chinese regime’s propaganda machine—and it’s gone viral.

Above her reads “Migrant Worker Unpaid Salary News Conference” Her rambling rhetoric that follows could be lifted from any of China’s scripted foreign ministry briefings.

[Miao Cuihua, Unpaid Wages News Agency]:
“We are regretted to hear that the official of the Bureau of Civil Affairs said ‘I represent the government. When I say not to give you money, you won’t get money. What can you do? We propose to peacefully, reasonably, and legally request payment. Harmony is precious. Society stability is the priority. So never appeal illegally.’”

The language she uses is typical of China’s well-educated elite, not a migrant worker who mixes concrete for a living.

Her video has been online since May, but in the past few days it’s exploded.

[Xie Liusheng, Shenzhen City Rights Activist for Migrant Workers]:
“It is very interesting. It satirizes the government’s corruption from another angle.”

[Chen Yongmiao, Beijing-based political commentator]:
“In China, if those migrant workers don’t use this kind of special, ironic, and mocking news reporting way to speak up. They would hardly get any public attention.”

Miao worked for the funeral administration department of Hangu district government in Tianjin City. She says a court ruled in 2009 that they owed workers almost $600,000 in unpaid wages, and has never paid up.

Her video is now making Hangu officials take notice, and they have been quick to respond. They’re not paying her though, instead, they say her video is full of distortions and she’s trying to extort more money from the state.

Angel Island’s painful legacy

Published on Oct 2, 2012 by chinadailyus
Perched in San Francisco Bay, Angel Island was opened in 1910. For the next 30 years, it was the point of entry for most of the 175,000 Chinese who immigrated to the United States.
One man detained at Angel Island, Show Nam Lee, who is now 91, shared with China Daily his memories of that time.

African Immigrants Talk About Life in Beijing

Published on Aug 27, 2012 by VOAvideo

Chinese companies have invested heavily in Africa, in recent years, and trade among Asian and African nations has soared. As their economic ties have grown, so have the number of African immigrants to China, now estimated at around half a million people. Shannon Van Sant talked with Africans who have re-located to the Chinese capital city about why they decided to move to China.

Tales of two Chinese women – space travel and forced abortion

Published on Jun 22, 2012 by linktv

(LinkAsia News: 6/22/12) A tale of two women: Liu Yang, the first Chinese female astronaut, blasted off earlier this week. The other, 22-year-old Feng Jianmai, was forced to have an abortion at seven months pregnant by local government officials. Host Yul Kwon reports on how people reacted to these two women’s stories.

France’s New Passion: All Things Chinese

Published on Aug 6, 2012 by VOAvideo

Not so long ago, Americans and Japanese tourists were the big spenders in France. No longer. During these summer months, France’s tourism industry is courting new clients with major purchasing power: Chinese. VOA’s Lisa Bryant reports that now the French are heading back to the classroom… to learn Chinese.

Figures From Chinese History: Confucius

Published on Jul 6, 2012 by NTDTV
Today, we are going to be starting off this first episode talking about Confucius. And if you are talking about notable figures in Chinese history, Confucius is a great place to start—because he really is the philosopher who defined Chinese society for the past two thousand years.

Confucius is thought to have lived from 551 to 479 BC, during the so-called ‘Spring and Autumn Period,’ when China’s Zhou Dynasty was slowly splitting up. This era later turned into the ‘Warring States Period,’ before China was unified again in around 200 BC.

Confucius was born in the state of Lu. This is the modern day Shandong province. Now, at the time when Confucius was born, China was kind of like Medieval Europe. Different states were competing with each other for power.

Confucius saw morality deteriorating and the aristocracy turning their back on the traditions of the Zhou Dynasty that Confucius viewed as a kind of Golden Age. Confucius felt he had a mission to return China to its former glory, to return to the ‘Way’ or Dao.

Today, the Dao refers to China’s traditional culture of self-cultivation and emphasis on the way of virtue. Confucius felt people in his age had lost true respect for the established rituals and norms of society. They merely carried out the formalities—without really understanding the true essence. To use the words of the time, “The world lacked the Dao.” Thus Confucius started his mission of educating the populace.

Confucius taught his disciples to become Gentlemen…instructing them in the six arts: Rites, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy, and mathematics.

Confucius stressed several philosophical concepts that would serve to maintain China’s social structure for the next two millennia. These include: Benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faithfulness. As well as loyalty and filial piety, the respectful relationship between subordinates and their superiors, such as sons and their fathers, or subjects and their rulers.

Confucius was never employed in any significant government post during his lifetime. But during the Han Dynasty, almost 300 years after his death, Confucianism was adopted as China’s state philosophy.

Confucianism became known as one of China’s three belief systems—along with Buddhism and Daoism.

But, Confucianism is very much a philosophy for those living in society—whereas Buddhism and Daoism stress withdrawing from the world to seek spiritual enlightenment.

The Confucian belief that rulers needed to be virtuous led to the establishment of the imperial examination system. These examinations started in the Sui Dynasty, which ran from 589 to 618 AD.

The examinations saw officials selected based on their academic achievements rather than through a hereditary system, as was common in other parts of the world at the time. Thus scholars noted that for many centuries, China had the most advanced political system in the world.

Gradually, these examinations became more structured through history. They saw prospective officials tested on their understanding and ability to memorize Confucian texts. Their answers during the exams had to demonstrate the well-cultivated thinking of a Confucian gentleman.

The exam system ended a few years before the fall of imperial China in 1911. And after the Communist takeover in 1949, Confucianism was ruthlessly attacked—especially during the Cultural Revolution and campaign to smash the four Olds: Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas.

Since Confucianism had been at the very core of Chinese society for two thousand years, the Communist regime’s attack against Confucianism can be seen as an attack on the very essence of Chinese culture.

But Confucianism has survived, particularly due to the preservation of the customs in Taiwan and other countries.

Today, when speaking of traditional Chinese culture, Confucius can be seen as one of the most influential figures from ancient times till the present day. His teachings are at the very heart of China’s traditional culture of self-cultivation and emphasis on virtue.

The silent strength of Lui Xia

Photographer Lui Xia is censored in her native China, where she lives under house arrest.
Using eerily life-like dolls, her work evokes the pain and suffering of her fellow Chinese.

China Tibet Self-Immolations

Since last March, at least 16 Tibetans, mostly monks and nuns, have set themselves on fire in protest of Chinese government policies. Although initially these self-immolations were largely isolated to a Tibetan area in southwestern China, they have spread and grown in number.

Chinese women brave broken bottles to become bodyguards

Getting hit over the head with a bottle is just part of the training to become female protection officers. Report by Jeremy Barnes.

Learn About Chinese New Year: Rituals, Food, Family

This is the most important traditional Chinese holiday, and it is typified by dragon and lion dances, fireworks, food and family. http://www.WatchMojo.com takes a look at the cultural and historical significance of Chinese New year.