Most thought when the dairy products company Sanlu bankrupted and the chief culprits was sentenced to death in the wake of the 2008 melamine scandals, it was safe to trust the domestic dairy producers and that melamine would be no more.

Indeed, despite the initial fears and boycotts that almost ruined dairies, consumers have returned and the dairies industry has reported a "better-than-expected" recovery according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

But that was prior to the re-emergence of melamine-contaminated dairy products on store shelves. Five companies were found to have used melamine-tainted materials that should have been destroyed in 2008.

As a result, the Chinese government has launched a 10-day market wide probe to thoroughly investigate and destroy tainted milk powders produced in 2008.

However, it's doubtful that this 10-day purge will be effective given that the authorities were ineffective when they had more than a year to investigate and destroy.

For example, the Shanghai-based Panda Dairy Co Ltd had been on the official blacklist of melamine users in the 2008 scandals. The fact that it has survived and even committed new offenses is a serious and loud alarm. And for melamine to be redistributed into the marketplace is embarrassing proof that our food safety monitoring system is not working.

10-day crackdown is for show, we need a real long-term solution to hold all offenders, not just those adding melamine to our daily milk, accountable at all times.
]]> http://www.zhangzk.com/blog/2010/02/contaminated-milk-resold-in-china/feed/ 1 http://www.zhangzk.com/blog/2010/01/some-chinese-characters-are-gender-biased/ http://www.zhangzk.com/blog/2010/01/some-chinese-characters-are-gender-biased/#comments Mon, 01 Feb 2010 05:40:39 +0000 John http://www.zhangzk.com/blog/?p=380

Character for Woman

A recent post on the popular Chinese forum Tianya has caused a sensation online. Author and lawyer Ye Mantian rallied against the structure of many vulgar Chinese characters as containing elements in reference to women.

Ye Mantian asked that such gender biased and often offensive characters are replaced with gender-neutral forms. For example, the character for rape is written as "姦", or simply the three characters for women (女) stacked together.

In her post, Ye stated that "during my elementary school years, looking through the dictionary left me with many impressions – many dirty, wretched, negative meaning words contain the radical “女”[female], and this type of [character] structure is not fair to women."

Ye listed 16 characters that are particularly offensive and gender biased; these characters are: “娱”[amusement], “耍”[playful], “婪”[greedy], “嫉”[envy], “妒”[envy], “嫌”[dislike], “佞”[to flatter], “妄”[presumptuous], “妖”[evil], “奴”[slave], “妓”[prostitute], “娼”[prostitute], “奸”[rape], “姘”[have an affair], “婊”[prostitute] and “嫖”[prostitute].

Ye went on to say that "to construct a egalitarian society where both men and women can mutually respect one another, we must respect our mothers, because she gave us nurturing kindness; we must respect our wives, because they and their husbands brings the household together, weathering through the highs and lows in life; we must love our daughters, because they are the future of our nation and people."

Do you think Chinese characters should be changed?

Legislators are soliciting opinions on the draft of an animal abuse law according to China Daily.

According to the draft, individuals will be fined up to 5000 Yuan plus a detention within 15 days if the eat the meat of a dog or a cat; moreover, instituions can be fined 10,000-500,000 Yuan.

The law has been in the draft stage for over a year and will be submitted to higher authorities come April. But draft legislation can take years to approve.

Drafters at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences have been consulting for more than a year with Britain’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the US-based International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Ending the culinary tradition is going to be difficult even it is passed in to law, as it dates back thousands of years. Dog meat was once considered a medicinal tonic.

The economic impact of this law would be small as China’s affluent don’t partake in the delicacy. In fact, such traditions have received much scrutiny from affluent, pet-loving, urban middle class. And online petitions against dog and cat consumption have attracted tens of thousands of signatures.

The Beijing authorities are fighting congested roads and air pollution with old technology by adding more bicycles to the roads.

The government aims to increase the proportion of cyclists on road from the current 19.7 percent to 23 percent by 2015 for a clearer sky and less traffic jams.

According to the director of the Municipal Communications Commission, the government will revise and eliminate regulations that discourage bicycle usage, and install more restrictions against car drivers.

The proportion of Beijing residents riding bicycles was only 19.7 percent in the first four months in 2009, compared with more than 80 percent in the 1980s.

The city will restore bicycle lanes which were cut to make more room for cars and buses. It will also work to relieve a shortage of secure bicycle parking, Liu said.

The government will build more parking lots for bikes alongside bus and subway stations so that cyclists could easily transfer to other transport vehicles.

Meanwhile, the city is making bikes more available for hire. By 2015, about 1,000 outlets will be offering 50,000 bikes for rent.

China was called "kingdom of bicycles" with a large army of bicycles, once totaling some 500 million, on the streets. But the number of bikes has plummeted as rapidly as private car ownership has expanded over the past decade.

Personally, I welcome this idea but I'm afraid that more bikes on the road does not necessarily mean less car on the road and the result might be more traffic jams and chaos because everything is on the road.

Huaxi village is a rural village in Jiangsu Province, China. Often regarded as the "No. 1 Village in China", Huaxi is the richest village with average per capita income many times that of the national average.

Heralded by the central government as a successful example of a communist style commune, the transformation of Huaxi village was the brainchild of former village Party Secretary Wu Renbao who along with his sons created a prosperous community modeled on both communism and capitalism.

However, Huaxi village recently stirred up debates online with the construction of a 328 meters tall skyscraper at village center where some netizens question the huge costs associated with the construction especially in a rural village. However, others believe that Huaxi village could be a model of development for villages across China.

The new skyscraper is designed in accord with a 5-star hotel standard, with a construction area of 200,000 square meters, it can accommodate more than 2000 residents, with a dining capacity of 3,000, and having the largest 360 degree revolving restaurant in Asia. Inside the building contain 35 elevators, with speeds of 10 meter per second, the fastest in the world, in addition to having the world’s most advanced monitoring and fire safety equipment.”

You must be having a hard time imagining that a “socialist new village” is building this soon-to-be completed luxury tower. In Jiangyin Huaxi village, this building with height ranked number 8 in China, and number 15 in the world will be completed in June of this year.

January 3rd, the newly re-elected Huaxi village party secretary Wu Xie’en stated, this building designed with a height of 328 m and 74 floors will require an investment of RMB 2.5 billion, predicted to be operational by 2011 during the 50th anniversary of the village, by that time Huaxi will have a new landmark.

Do you think a rural village should build such skyscraper?

China Mobile, one of the nation’s largest cellular providers, reported that text messages would automatically be scanned for “key words” provided by the police. Messages will be deemed “unhealthy” if they violate undisclosed criteria established by the central government.

Chinese authorities say the new restrictions are necessary to root out pornography, piracy and other law-breaking activity on the Internet and in electronic communications.

According to China Daily, the police will evaluate the text messages of users suspected of transmitting unhealthy content, and during that time, China Mobile will suspend the text-messaging function for those phone numbers. If the authorities clear a user of any violation, they will issue a certificate allowing text-messaging services to be resumed, the newspaper said.

Do you think the telecommunication company have the rights to scan users' text messages?

A college student in China who said his studies suffered after he discovered Internet porn has been awarded 10,000 yuan (1,466 dollars) for helping the government crack down on sexual content online.

The unidentified student at an unnamed college in northern Shanxi province reported 32 websites that contained pornography, winning a nationwide contest that has encouraged web-surfers to hunt down porn.

The unnamed student said, “In the past, when I was in middle school, I used to get grades that were good enough to enter a really good university. It is because of the influence of pornography on the Internet that I was only able to go to junior college.”

During an interview with the Shanxi Daily, this student stated his first encounter with porn was in middle school.

“I used Google because we couldn’t find any porn on Chinese websites. After our English teacher taught us the word “sex”, I entered the word and many foreign porn sites came up.”

Nearly 62,000 websites were reported during the first month of the crackdown, the paper said -- an indication that a hefty number of web users were on the lookout for porn.

Chinese authorities arrested more than 5,000 people in a crackdown on Internet pornography in 2009, officials said earlier this year.

Internet use has expanded at a dizzying pace in China, which now has the world's largest online population with at least 338 million users.

I don't know what to say. Each site that the govern-ment takes down, about 100 new ones pops up. So in a way, one can make a living just by reporting porn sites; it is a sustainable way of making money.

The comment about can't find any porn on Chinese websites and had to resort to using Google is simply outrageous and is a tell tale sign of being scripted ahead of time.

Everyone is crazy about Avatar here in Beijing but most people who want to see the movie are not able to due to...too many people.

A friend of mine went to the movie theater last Wednesday at 8AM and discover that there were literally 1,000 people inline before her to purchase an IMAX 3D Avatar ticket.

She gave up and left the theater.

She ultimately settled for the regular 3D version which she waited inline for 5 hours.

Beijing has almost 20 million residents and only 4 IMAX theaters.  As you can see the demand greatly outnumbers the supply.

When Avatar first came out a few weeks ago, I told all my friends I would not see any other version except the IMAX version; now I'll be glad if I can get a regular 3D version.

Let's hope Avatar live up to all these hype and not disappoint me when I get a ticket.

I failed.

The first time I posted, the post vanished after 10 minutes; I thought I posted it wrong and posted it again.  The post was up for 30 minutes, in which time two people forwarded my post to their friends, after which, the post and my friends' forwards vanished and there's no trace of it anywhere.

I'm not shocked that the translation got erased, I'm shocked at the speed it got erased.  The team working on ensuring China's "free" Internet is mind-blowing efficient.

A new approach to China
1/12/2010 03:00:00 PM

Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident--albeit a significant one--was something quite different.

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses--including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors--have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers.

We have already used information gained from this attack to make infrastructure and architectural improvements that enhance security for Google and for our users. In terms of individual users, we would advise people to deploy reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on their computers, to install patches for their operating systems and to update their web browsers. Always be cautious when clicking on links appearing in instant messages and emails, or when asked to share personal information like passwords online. You can read more here about our cyber-security recommendations. People wanting to learn more about these kinds of attacks can read this U.S. government report (PDF), Nart Villeneuve's blog and this presentation on the GhostNet spying incident.

We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech. In the last two decades, China's economic reform programs and its citizens' entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today.

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that "we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China."

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.

Posted by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

中文翻译：

像许多其他著名组织一样,谷歌也经常面临不同程度的黑客攻击.12月中旬,我们侦测到一个针对企业基础设施的高度复杂和有目标的攻击.这次攻击源自中国,并导致谷歌的知识财产被窃取.但是,不久后我们发现起初貌似仅仅只是次安全事故(尽管很重大)的这次攻击,其实大有不同.

首先,这次攻击不仅仅是针对谷歌.作为调查的一部分,我们发现至少20家其他各行业(包括互联网,财经,技术,媒体和化学等行业)的大型公司也类似地成为攻击目标.我们目前正在告知这些公司,并与相关美国政府机构合作.

第二,我们有证据显示袭击者的首要目标是进入中国人权活动家的Gmail帐号.根据目前的调查我们相信他们的攻击并未达成这个目标.只有2个Gmail帐号被攻入,但活动仅限于帐号信息(比如何时创建的Gmail帐号)和邮件标题栏,而邮件内容本身是安全的.

第三,作为本次调查中与谷歌被袭无关的部分,我们发现若干美国,中国和欧洲的倡导中国人权的Gmail用户的帐号经常性地被第三方访问.这些账户并未因谷歌的安全漏洞被进入,更可能通过钓鱼诈骗或在用户电脑上安插恶意软件实现.

我们利用从这次攻击中收集到的信息进行基础设施和竞购性的改进以加强谷歌和谷歌用户的安全.

我们采取非同寻常的措施:与广大受众分享有关近期袭击的信息.因为我们发掘出事件的安全和人权方面的意义,也因为这些信息直指全球范围内关于言论自由辩论的核心.过去20年,中国的经济改革和中国公民的企业家才能帮数亿中国人走出贫困.这个伟大的国家的确是当今世界经济发展进步的中心.

为中国人民增加接触信息途径和一个更开放的互联网带来的益处压倒了我们对删减搜索结果的不适,带着这个信念,我们在2006年1月开办了Google.cn.当时我们澄清"我们会小心监察中国的状况,包括新的法律和其他对我们服务的限制.如果我们认定我们无法达成实现勾勒出的目标,我们会毫不犹豫地重新考虑进入中国的方式."

近日的袭击和这些袭击所暴露的监视行为,以及和过去一年里进一步限制网上自由言论的努力,使我们做出结论:我们应该重新审视我们在华业务的可行性.我们决定我们不再自愿删减Google.cn的搜索结果,未来几周我们会和中国政府讨论在法律范围内我们以何种基础来经营一个未经过滤的搜索引擎,如果谷歌还在中国有搜索引擎业务的话.我们清楚这可能意味着不得不关闭Google.cn,还可能撤出在中国的办公室.

这个决定对我们异常艰难,我们清楚这决定意义深远.我们想要澄清这次行动由谷歌在美国的管理人员推动,谷歌在中国的雇员并无知晓和参与.他们用难以置信的努力使Google.cn成为今天的成功.我们将专注于负责任地解决这些棘手的问题.

First of all, I applaud Google's decision to fight the Chinese government on the issue of search censorship; however, I don't see China backing down on the censorship issue and I don't see Google completely pulls its operations from China.  It would be interesting to see how this plays out.

On a side note, this is just despicable:

The search term was Tiananmen (天安门) and the note at the end of the search page translates to: Due to local government regulations, some results are not shown.