By Ed Flanagan on Behind The Wall
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BEIJING - The Great Wall of China is one of the world's most famous landmarks, but much of it is still being explored. NBC's Ian Williams joined noted Great Wall historian, William Lindesay and Steven Schwankert of SinoScuba to take a unique look at one hidden section of the wall, diving down into a vast lake that submerged the wall when an entire valley was flooded decades ago.
People lined up outside Beijing's Apple store for their chance to buy the latest iPad. NBC's Ed Flanagan reports.
BEIJING – This time, Apple and its devoted Chinese customers weren’t taking any chances.
Wary of a repeat of the iPhone 4S debacle in China in January, when Apple’s release led to scuffles and even an egging of its flagship Beijing store by angry hordes after it was forced to cancel sales due to the crowds, Apple’s managers here put their heads together and came up with a new strategy for dealing with the crowds.
They came up with a reservation style of ordering already in use in other countries like the United States. However, this time they decided to institute the reservation system as the only way to purchase the latest iPad, which features a sharper display and better camera than previous versions, for its China debut.
Around 50 customers quietly lined up outside the store in Beijing Friday morning, staring intently inside the store as an almost equal number of jovial blue-uniformed employees clapped, sang and danced in the minutes before opening.
It was a far cry from the sheer bedlam unleashed earlier this year when the iPhone 4S went on sale. On that day, many in the crowd were scalpers who local media said hired scores of people to line up with them to purchase the precious phones to be sold in other Chinese cities for a higher rate.
‘It shouldn’t take too long to learn how to use’
First in line to purchase the new iPad in Beijing on Friday was Ye Huafei, a 34-year-old software engineer who arrived at the store just two hours before opening. Forced to purchase this new iPad after his iPad2 had been poached by his mother to watch TV dramas, Ye elected to arrive early to pick up his new iPad so he could bring it to work and show it off to his colleagues.
“It feels great to be first,” said Ye. “The scene here is fantastic.”
Apple’s new product releases tend to attract a younger, status-conscious crowd in China. But mixed in the opening throng of customers was Mr. Wu, an older customer who coyly put his age at “under 65.”
Wu owns an iPhone 4S, but decided to upgrade to an iPad because he is getting older and his eyes have been getting tired looking at the small screen.
With new iPad in hand, the first thing Wu did was walk over to a nearby counter where an Apple employee was offering hour-long lessons to new customers on how to use their new tablets.
Fresh from class, Wu excitedly showed us what he had learned.
“It shouldn’t take too long to learn how to use, I have a strong base,” he said happily. “I have an iPhone 4S and I know how to use that very well.”
He will need to learn quickly. With his purchase, Wu became the first member of his extended family to use an iPad.
One thing he did not take long to discover was the free WiFi at the Apple store. With no Internet connection at home, Wu decided to save money by not purchasing a 3G-capable iPad and bought a wifi-capable tablet instead.
Pointing to the Apple store behind him, Wu said, “I’ll just come here. My home is very close…I spent the money, so I should enjoy the product and the service.”
The ‘it’ product
Like in much of the rest of the world, Apple’s phones and tablets have become the “it” product to own in China, which is now Apple’s second-largest market after the United States. But with just five official Apple stores in the country, even a robust gray market for Apple products cannot always keep up with demand, especially in the days immediately following a high-profile release.
Apple was forced to delay the mainland release of the latest iteration of the iPad due to a lawsuit brought by a company claiming to own the iPad trademark in China. So the company had time to experiment with the new reservation system in Hong Kong for its iPad debut last March and found it effective in dealing with scalpers and the crush that has followed previous product launches.
Since the Cupertino, Calif., company settled the trademark issue for a reported $60 million earlier this month, mainland Chinese customers were invited yesterday to start registering to purchase the iPad at a special website created by the tech giant. Upon filling out the online form, customers were given a designated time to pick up their new iPads.
On Thursday morning, NBC News attempted to log onto the website when it opened at 9 a.m. but the usual crowd of customers apparently crashed the site. The site was up and running again within the hour.
Questions about whether news of the change in policy had gotten out to the public and to poachers were answered early Friday morning when the plaza outside the Apple store in Beijing was mostly empty.
Reports from the other four Apple-owned stores also showed smooth sales.
Over 1,000 volunteers worked together to break the Guinness World Record for 'human mattress dominoes.' NBC News Ed Flanagan reports from Beijing.
BEIJING – It may have been all talk of hard landings and poor economic numbers last week in most of China, but volunteers in Shanghai over the weekend found themselves on softer ground.
This past Saturday, 1,001 volunteers in Shanghai came together at an unused section of a shopping mall in an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for “human mattress dominoes.” The idea was to have people and mattresses line up and fall on top of each other like, well, dominoes.
Rules of the event were simple: each participant must touch the person behind them and there needed to be a consecutive chain of toppling mattresses.
Wielding a radio with one hand and clutching his vertical mattress with the other, the first participant called out “Starting!” before leaning back into his mattress onto another volunteer.
That kicked off a wave of mattresses falling that took 10 minutes to finish. Cheers erupted from onlookers and the fallen as the last volunteer collapsed on his mattress, officially crushing the previous record held by La Quinta Inns & Suites in the United States, which in February of this year mobilized 850 of its employees in New Orleans to break the world record.
All of the participants in Shanghai this weekend were given $6.30, a souvenir shirt and a certificate of participation.
“We need good teamwork,” said one of the volunteers. “All the participants from the first to the last, must act like one person… that is dominoes.”
Gathering 1,000 people for the spectacle took a great deal of organization, said Cheng Dong, an authenticator from Guinness World Records. As well as… bravery?
“Our volunteers were all very brave. No one dodged when the 2-meter-high (6.56ft) mattress fell onto them,” he said.
BEIJING – Workers around the world sometimes get a little extra cash for jobs with tough occupational hazards, but what do you give an airplane cabin crew that successfully thwarts a hijack attempt?
In China, quite a bit.
Chinese netizens were buzzing on Monday about payouts to crew members of a Tianjin Airlines flight who foiled an attempted hijacking in China’s troubled Xinjiang Province 11 days ago
Hainan Airlines, the parent company of Tianjin Airlines, gave two onboard security officers and the chief flight attendant a cool million yuan each ($157,000), houses said to be worth 3 million yuan each ($470,000) and brand new Audi cars.
Other crew members involved in foiling the hijacking were awarded a half million yuan ($80,000) each and apartments said to be worth 2 million yuan ($315,000) per person.
In addition to that windfall, the provincial government in Hainan, where the airline is based, awarded all the crew members half a million yuan ($80,000).
Details have slowly emerged about the incident, with state media reporting that six people tried to hijack the flight 10 minutes after it took off from the Hotan, a city in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, headed to the regional capital, Urumqi. The hijackers reportedly disassembled a pair of crutches into metal rods and attempted to rush the cockpit.
The region, home to the Uighur ethnic minority, is known for its separatist movement, so the alleged hijackers were quickly labeled terrorists by the Chinese media.
After the violence broke out, the reports said, passengers, cabin crew and air security fought back, subduing the hijackers while the pilots turned back and landed safely back at Hotan. The two air police officers were seriously injured during the attempted hijack, while the head flight attendant and seven passengers suffered minor injuries.
Two of the hijackers wounded during the attack died of their injuries, according to news reports.
The announcement of the hefty awards generated a lot of buzz on China’s Twitter-like service, Weibo, mostly congratulating the crew for their bravery and service to the 100 passengers onboard. However, some of the comments questioned the large financial prizes to the crew.
“It's necessary to give them [the crew] rewards, but isn't it too much?” wrote one commenter. “If they want to give rewards, shouldn't those passengers on the plane be given more?”
Others took a similar tack with a healthy dose of sarcasm.
“Hainan Airlines is really rich! Next time I will also fly Hainan planes and hope to have the same good luck!” wrote another.
“In the future I will take more flights in Xinjiang – it’s much more reliable than the lottery,” another chimed in.
Unusually, Chinese state media has given the hijacking, dubbed the “6.29 Hijacking,” more coverage than previous cases involving ethnic unrest, with many details about the incident and warm articles emerging about the heroic crew.
Meanwhile, the government has responded to the incident by tightening flying restrictions in the region. Last week, the government announced new security measures that requires handicapped passengers in wheelchairs or passengers on crutches to show a hospital-issued certification, and passengers flying from the heavily Uighur city of Kashgar are now required to check in crutches and wheelchairs.
NBC News’ Horace Lu contributed to this report
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Peter Parks / AFP - Getty Images
A man passes a women wearing shorts as she waits for a subway train in Shanghai on Wednesday. A subway operator in the Chinese metropolis of Shanghai has caused uproar by warning women not to wear revealing clothes to avoid being groped by the city's "perverts."
BEIJING – For women in Shanghai looking to beat the heat this summer with skimpier clothes, the city’s subway authorities have a message: dress appropriately or be ready to deal with the inevitable sexual harassment.
The controversy online started on June 20 when someone posted on the Shanghai Number 2 Subway Line official Weibo account – Chinese version of Twitter – a picture of a female passenger wearing a revealing dress with the comment: “If that’s what you wear on the subway, then no wonder you will be sexually harassed! There are perverts riding the subway every day and we can’t catch them all. Girls, you’ve got to respect yourself!”
Outrage over the comment was swift and voluminous, quickly becoming the second-most discussed topic on Weibo with nearly 16,000 forwards and 7,000 comments tagged to the original post alone.
No right to judge!
The overwhelming number of comments condemned the message and its insinuation that revealing dress could be viewed as an invitation for harassment; branding it blatant gender discrimination.
"It's a woman’s business to choose what to wear, if laws or your regulations do not forbid her from dressing like this, you [the Metro] have no right to chastise them,” wrote one commentator. “If your logic were right, then all men would harass women in the swimming pool.”
“You have the right to judge whether people are dressing elegantly or not. And you have the right to like it or not,” wrote another critic of the Shanghai Metro. “But you have no right to harass anyone!”
Some people also raised questions about the fact that the Shanghai Metro staff took a photo of the unwitting passenger in the first place, and, adding insult to injury, used the photo in its controversial public service announcement.
Zhejiang Province Police
The Zhejiang province police department's diagram meant to give women guidance on how men's lurking eyes can lead to sexual harrassment.
“First I think the Metro has no right to insult others, especially their passengers. It's a matter of professional decency,” wrote Hao Junbo, a lawyer on Weibo. “If the Metro published this person's picture without approval beforehand, it violates the passenger's rights.”
Responding to the criticism, Lan Tian, a press officer for Shanghai Shentong Metro Group, the authority that runs the Shanghai subway, justified the company’s comments to the Chinese state newspaper Global Times.
"As the city's subway operator, we have the responsibility to warn women of the potential danger of sexual harassment on the subway," he told the Global Times. "At the same time, we are not justifying any kind of sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior."
Nevertheless, perhaps inspired by the general sentiment expressed online, a couple days later on June 24, several women went to another subway station in Shanghai to protest the Weibo post by the Shanghai Metro.
Donning black veils that covered their faces and holding signs that said things like, “Just because I'm slutty doesn't mean you can be dirty,” the girls rode the subway in an attempt to call attention to the issue.
Interestingly, this time though, online sentiment was against the protestors, with many arguing that women should in fact dress more conservatively while riding the subway. A recent online poll by Sina Weibo found that 55 percent of over 10,000 people agreed with that sentiment.
Elaborate diagrams to thwart harassment
By all accounts, reports of sexual harassment on the Shanghai metro have been on the rise this year. An editorial in Wednesday’s edition of China’s People’s Daily noted that there had been seven cases of sexual harassment since May of this year.
There has been a greater emphasis nationally to raise awareness about sexual harassment and to educate Chinese women on how to protect themselves. But some of the recent articles on how to avoid becoming a victim of sexual harassment verge on the ridiculous.
A recent article by the popular Chinese web portal, QQ, includes a number of graphics showing how men attempt to harass women by looking up skirts on elevators or even when women try on shoes at department stores.
But this diagram put out on the Zhejiang province police department’s official Weibo account earlier this year was perhaps the most puzzling. It looks like an elaborate SAT math question requiring a thorough grounding in geometry. For example, the second and third illustrations are designed to help women understand the angles at which men can position their heads or bodies to look up their skirts while riding the subway.
If the diagram is confusing already with its multiple diagrams, consider the English translation of the explanation:
“If the eyes of the ‘observer’, i.e. the point E, is right on the extension of segment BC, then point B would fall into his eyesight. Then, let's make another line of DE which goes through E and is perpendicular to the extension of AC, then the right triangle of DEC is similar to the right triangle of ABC. So clearly, the length of DC is the horizontal distance between the man's eye and the lady’s skirt. Ladies, have you figured that out?”
Unsure if you have figured out whether that man is looking up your skirt? Consult the closest math teacher in your subway car.
NBC News’ Horace Lu contributed to this report.
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BEIJING – They say working with animals on screen can be maddeningly unpredictable, even with Zen-like patience.
So there could be no better person to test that theory than a Buddhist monk, right?
Yen Shen, a monk who serves as a director of the Cangzhou Buddhist Association in China’s Hebei province was at Mount Emei – a popular tourist site and home to a well-known Buddhist temple – in western Sichuan shooting a little video about the beauty of the region.
With lush forest and fog draped valleys behind him, Yen was speaking poetically about the beauty of the region and the need to take time to connect with nature. “As the years pass, let us bless our friends, let us bless everything,” he waxes on poetically in the video, “when the year’s pass let us bless spring and the autumn.”
That’s when the monkey business starts. (Click to watch the video above).
Just 10 seconds into his monologue, what looks like a Tibetan macaque next to him starts grabbing Yen’s robes and playing with them. Showing incredible TV professional poise though, Yen continues talking about Buddhist spirituality without skipping a beat.
Then 1:30 into the video, two macaques run up and jump onto Yen, turning him into a human jungle gym. Yen appears momentarily frozen in panic, but recovers and then continues talking; ignoring the growing giggles and chatter of onlookers.
A third monkey joins in on the fun at 1:58, before someone hands one of the macaques what appears to be a cookie and pulls Yen out of the way.
Further attempts to continue the video are derailed as one monkey who will not be denied his 15 minutes of fame, perches itself next to Yen and starts clutching his robe, only letting go long enough to devour more biscuits handed to him just off screen by a helper.
As biscuit after biscuit is handed over to the ravenous monkey, Yen simply looks at him with seeming amusement, all while passersby yell advice on how to deal with the monkeys and urge him to look back up at the camera and continue.
The video has racked up almost 1 million hits since it was posted on Sina, the Chinese web site, Wednesday. Online commentators mostly express admiration for Yen’s ability to keep talking despite the distraction. Strangely though, many more commentators seemed interested in discussing the monk’s “strange” accent as much as the rambunctious macaques.
Regardless, a marvelous big screen debut by both man and monkeys.
Andy Wong / AP
Ai Weiwei, second from left, stopped by a plain clothes policeman while he argues with another policeman, foreground, outside his home in Beijing on Wednesday.
BEIJING – While Ai Weiwei didn’t get his day in court Wednesday, he did get his case heard.
The Chinese artist and social activist was noticeably absent from opening arguments at a Beijing courtroom after he was warned off by police. Instead, Ai, 54, stayed home at his studio while his wife, Lu Qing, represented their design company, Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd., with a team of lawyers.
Ai and his wife are challenging a ruling by the tax office that rejected their appeal against a steep fine imposed for alleged tax evasion, a charge roundly rejected as false and trumped up by Ai and his supporters.
NBC News spoke to Ai Weiwei by phone late Wednesday afternoon, but he could not comment on how legal proceedings had gone.
The government previously ordered Ai’s company to pay a staggering 15 million yuan ($2.4 million) in alleged back taxes and additional fines. Surprisingly, Ai raised the money needed to pay an 8.45 million yuan ($1.3 million) bond needed to contest the tax charges through donations and contributions from around 30,000 supporters after he called for assistance through social media, a favored tool of his and other activists in China.
Stunts like these as well as his pokes at authority – see the photo he posted yesterday on Twitter sporting a too-tight Chinese police uniform – anger authorities who view Ai as a troublemaker.
In April 2011, Ai was detained without charge during a national roundup of activists and dissidents following the many pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle East.
It was only after his 81-day detention that tax-evasion charges against Ai and his company were made, lending credence to claims made by human rights watchers and Ai supporters that the move was retaliation by the government.
The case against Ai has been shrouded in secrecy due to the government’s unwillingness, or inability, to reveal any original tax documents as evidence of tax evasion they purport to have.
Sharron Lovell / Polaris
Click to see a slideshow of photos of projects done by the Chinese artist and activist Ai Wei Wei.
A hearing held last July during which the government’s evidence would ostensibly have been revealed was closed and the company’s lawyers were barred from attending, a decision Ai’s lawyers claim was illegal.
It is a sensitive time politically in China as President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao are poised to step down later this year. Despite the political drama swirling around the fleeing of dissident Chen Guangcheng to the United States and the ongoing Bo Xilai scandal, Beijing desperately wants to make the transition peaceful and is doing everything possible this year to mitigate sensitive stories.
Yet, as has sometimes proven the case when it comes to Ai, attempts to muzzle or contain him can backfire.
While Beijing police have discouraged local dissidents from going to the courthouse to support Ai, security was said to be intense around the court with a ring of police cars around it and officers telling foreign press to stay away as well. Still, supporters of Ai were seen outside holding small signs that said “Ai Weiwei, we love you” and “No justice without a fight.”
Meanwhile, the detention of Ai’s legal consultant, Liu Xiaoyuan, by security forces Tuesday outraged Ai, who announced it on Twitter and called for Liu’s immediate release. Ai told NBC News that Liu’s phone had been turned off and that he had been “taken away to the countryside for some sort of treatment by the police.”
Additionally, Ai has also been using Twitter to call attention to the heavy police presence outside his home. He pointed to a bust up at his home yesterday when someone in his studio took a photo of what Ai described as “30-40 police cars.” Ai alleges that police rushed the photographer to grab the camera, causing some minor scratches and bruises which were tweeted here.
As part of his conditional release late last year, Ai’s travel rights were taken away and he was told to refrain from criticism of the government through social media.
Friday was supposed to be the day those restrictions would be lifted, but in lieu of Ai’s continued defiance, it is hard to believe local authorities won’t extend these restraints in order to rein him in.
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Liu Yang becomes the first Chinese female astronaut to go to space while traveling on the Shenzhou 9 capsule. NBC's Ed Flanagan reports.
BEIJING -- China's first woman in space, Liu Yang, will be conducting space medical experiments on a 10-day mission that started Saturday, but experts are deeply interested in the mechanics of the mission -- namely the manual space docking the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft will attempt with the Tiangong-1 module.
Launched last September, the Tiangong-1 is China’s first space laboratory module and a key cog in Beijing’s larger ambitions of establishing a space station by 2020. From this outpost, Chinese scientists over the next few years will be able to test out new equipment and experiment with future space station capabilities.
But first Chinese astronauts need to prove they can actually dock with it.
Last year, China successfully got its unmanned Shenzhou-8 spacecraft to remotely link up with the Tiangong-1 module, but this will be the first time Chinese astronauts will attempt to manually guide a spacecraft into docking.
"Some people describe the manual docking as threading a needle from 100 meters away, so you can see how difficult and precise the procedure would be” said astronaut Jing Haipeng, who with 14 years of experience in China’s space program, will be responsible for this critical aspect of the mission.
"The manual space rendezvous ... is a huge test for astronauts' ability to judge spatial position, eye-hand coordination and psychological abilities," he added.
According to NBC News space analyst, James Oberg, the sooner China’s astronauts master how to linkup with the Tiangong-1, the faster the country will be able to realize its long-term vision.
“The Tiangong-1 is not just a docking target ... this is a full-fledged, live support module that can also can be used as a living space if the Chinese decide to move beyond low-Earth out to the moon or deep space” said Oberg. “The Tiangong-1 is exactly the kind of module for long term, deep space missions.”
China’s space rise a cause for concern?
According to Oberg, China’s rapid development in space capability is quickly bringing the nation to the same level as the other major space powers.
“What the Chinese are doing is not just going on a tail chase of ancient space race accomplishments,” says Oberg, “They are bringing themselves right up to and in some cases maybe even taking a step ahead of some of the other space powers.”
“It’s a very, very impressive program on a very broad front,” he adds.
There have been some questions, though, about whether China’s space program is going too fast. An annual U.S. Department of Defense report on China’s military and security developments released in May theorized that China’s space program might be encountering challenges in system reliability, pointing to an August 2011 malfunctioning of a Long March 2C rocket.
China is currently in the process of several large scale improvements in its space capabilities. The design of the much larger Long March 5 booster and the construction of a new rocket launch site on Hainan Island are just two examples that will push China’s technological expertise.
Report: First Chinese female astronaut joins space club
Increased reliability and confidence in China’s space capabilities will be critical for another important Chinese aspiration: increased commercial opportunities. European and American satellite builders have traditionally corned the market on satellite construction and launching. A U.S. ban on the use of American components in satellites launched by China have effectively kept China out of the competition for satellite construction bids.
The success of Chinese designed, constructed and launched satellites could position China to be a major player in the industry.
“When the Chinese get credibility for their technology that space successes give them, they elbow their way to the top rank,” says Oberg, “the slice of the U.S. pie will shrink when the Chinese start getting a bigger slice.”
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Bobby Yip / Reuters
People take part in a candlelight vigil at Hong Kong's Victoria Park on Monday to commemorate those who died during the military crackdown of the pro-democracy movement at Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.
BEIJING – Government controls many aspects of life in China, but for today at least the invisible hand of market forces proved too strong even for the country’s ruling Communist Party.
In an apparent coincidence, Shanghai’s local stock market, the Shanghai Composite Index, opened trading this morning at 2346.98 points. Read backwards, it looks like the date, June 4, 1989 – this day 23 years ago when the Communists brutally cracked down on pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square and elsewhere in the capital.
Even more bizarre? By the end of trading in the afternoon, the market had lost 64.89 points.
PhotoBlog: Thousands remember Tiananmen Square crackdown
The significance of the numbers might have passed without comment had authorities not tried to censor discussion of the anniversary by preventing users on Weibo - China’s equivalent of Twitter – from posting terms such as “six four,” “candle” and “never forget.” With users abuzz over the Shanghai Composite Index numbers, censors had to widen the list of banned terms to include the Chinese word for ‘Index’.
Hundreds of students and other civilians are estimated to have been killed in 1989 as People’s Liberation Army soldiers entered the capital to clear the streets of protesters. The topic of the crackdown is taboo in this country and little discussed aside from sanitized official accounts in textbooks that call the event a “political disturbance.”
Security around Tiananmen Square is typically boosted before the anniversary and censors work to keep discussion to a minimum.
June 4, 1989: NBC News reports as Chinese soldiers crush demonstrations.
State Department deputy spokesman, Mark Toner, issued a statement on Sunday urging the Chinese government to "release all those still serving sentences for their participation in the demonstrations; to provide a full public accounting of those killed, detained or missing; and to end the continued harassment of demonstration participants and their families."
In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Weimin, called U.S. statements on the June 4th incident a “crude meddling in domestic Chinese affairs.”
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BEIJING – Google has started telling users in China when web searches contain keywords that could be tracked by the country's keen-eyed censors, one of the company's top officials announced.
“Starting today we’ll notify users in mainland China when they enter a keyword that may cause connection issues,” Alan Eustace, a Senior Vice President for Google, wrote on the company's Inside Search blog on Thursday. “By prompting people to revise their queries, we hope to reduce these disruptions and improve our user experience from mainland China.”
As the video on Eustace's blog shows (see below), triggering connectivity issues on Google.com.hk can be as easy as searching for one of the country’s greatest natural landmarks: The Yangtze River.
Presumably in this case, "Jiang" the Chinese character for river, is a sensitive term because it is also the last name of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin. The 85-year-old, who is thought to still be politically connected, is the focus of constant erroneous rumors and reports about his death.
Consequently, if you are looking for "Chang Jiang," the popular name of the Yangtze River here in China, you could run afoul of sensors looking to block rumors of the former leader's death and have your connection to Google temporarily terminated.
Online coup rumors spark China crackdown on social media websites
The video on Eustace's blog shows how it took about 90 seconds after each sensitive search for the connection to be re-established on several Internet browsers and devices.
This graphic shows the message that will appear when users try to search for these restricted words:
Google’s move will ostensibly allow users on the mainland to see when their searches are being censored and understand why the service is disrupted. Other Google products, such as Google Mail and Documents, often fail to load and frequently require refreshing or an enabled virtual private network (VPN) to access freely.
However, since Google’s high profile “pullout” of its search engine from China in 2010, Google’s share of the search market here in China has shrunk from 30 percent in 2009 to 16.6 percent in 2012, according to Beijing-based research firm Analysys International.
Much of that share has been ceded to its Chinese rival, Baidu, which now dominates the arena with 78.5 percent of the search market. Even Google Maps, which was the most popular online mapping service on the mainland for some time, recently lost the top spot to a competitor.
One tweet, 10,000 followers: Dissident artist Ai Weiwei slips, briefly, through China censor
Those dwindling mainland users who have undoubtedly already encountered search restrictions and disconnection issues before, but continue to rely on Google, will probably not benefit too much from the company's new measures. After all, many of the users who suffered through 90-second connection resets in the past have already turned to other ways to bypass the restrictions.
What this move will do, though, is help Google regain the moral high ground internationally by reclaiming “Don’t be Evil,” it's informal corporate motto. Google has long fought for a more open Internet around the world, and even created “Transparency Report,” which looks closely at net freedom issues.
Read more news from Behind the Wall
However, privacy issues in the United States and a European Union warning to Google to review its recently revamped privacy policies have haunted the Silicon Valley giant, forcing its data mining practices to the forefront.
Google’s new service may help some mainland Chinese users better understand how Beijing restricts its netizens from accessing certain material, but for the message to be really effective, Google first needs to get people to use its service again.
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BEIJING – Our colleagues at Morning Joe had The Atlantic correspondent, James Fallows, on their show this week to talk about his new book, “China Airborne” and other China news. With over 100 new airports under construction on the mainland and national airlines purchasing some of the newest fleets in the world, China is experiencing an incredible aviation boom.
How sustained that boom will be and where China’s aviation industry is poised to go in the near and distant future is the topic of Fallows’ – who has written extensively on China and served as The Atlantic’s correspondent there for many years – book.
CCTV
Yang Rui, host of CCTV-9's English-language talk show, Dialogue, is under fire for a microblog posting he made last week calling for the China to "Clean out foreign garbage."
BEIJING – Following recent high-profile examples of foreigners behaving badly in China, last week saw a spike of anti-foreigner sentiment that culminated in the announcement of a hundred day Beijing police crackdown on illegal immigration.
Among the commentators who applauded the crackdown was Yang Rui, a television host on China’s state-run English-language TV network, CCTV-9. On his microblog on China’s Twitter-like service, Weibo, Yang posted a bile-laden diatribe on how China’s Public Security Bureau should deal with foreigners (Thanks to China Smack for the translation):
"The Ministry of Public Security must clean out foreign garbage, arrest foreign thugs and protect ignorant/innocent girls, with Wudaokou (popular student area in Beijing) and Sanlitun (bar & restaurant district in Beijing] being the disaster areas [worst places]. Behead the snake heads [human traffickers], the unemployed Americans and Europeans who come to China to make money, trafficking in people, misleading the public and encouraging them to emigrate. Identify the foreign spies, who find a Chinese woman to cohabitate with, while their job is to collect intelligence, drawing maps and perfecting GPS [coordinates] for Japan, Korea, Europe, and America under the guise of being tourists. Drive out the foreign shrew, shut down Al Jazeera’s Beijing office, let those who demonize China shut their mouths!"
The vitriol in Yang’s post is appalling but is made all the more worse by his day job. Yang co-hosts “Dialogue,” a current event news talk program in the vein of “Meet the Press” or the “Charlie Rose Show.” On his program, Yang invites foreign experts to discuss topical world and China-related news.
That Yang holds such inflammatory opinions of foreigners is worrying, given that he’s the host of one of CCTV’s more venerable news programs charged with providing a forum for the civil exchange of ideas and opinions between China and the outside world.
Ad hominem attacks on foreigners aside, particularly of concern are Yang’s charges that foreign spies have infiltrated China, at a time when Chinese suspicions of foreigners are already running high.
Yang’s comments come after a series of high-profile incidents that have provoked extreme nationalist rhetoric in public debate: sovereignty in the South China Sea, American re-commitment to Asia and the recent kidnapping of Chinese fishing vessels by North Korea.
Guests who have appeared on Yang’s show have contributed to the negative fall-out.
The Atlantic’s James Fallows –who during his years in China occasionally appeared on the program– posted a piece on his blog about what it was like to appear on “Dialogue.”
Similarly, Charlie Custer, founder of the tech blog China Geeks and a two-time guest on the show also expressed his outrage and even confronted Yang on Weibo about his post.
Yang responded on Weibo by calling for the Public Security Bureau to investigate Custer and even threatened to sue him.
One thing that is clear from the reaction registered by Fallows, Custer, and other foreign guests is that it’s about to get a little bit harder for Yang to find foreigners willing to appear on his show.
Explanation or apology?
NBC News attempted to call Yang; an email sent to him today went unanswered. But the embattled host penned a statement in today’s edition of the Global Times, apparently as a response to a Wall Street Journal story about the incident.
CCTV
CCTV-9 host, Yang Rui.
In this statement, Yang claimed his comments were a reaction to last week’s news and a “wake-up call” for both Westerners and Chinese people. While he acknowledged that there was a “silent majority in the expat communities who obey and respect our culture and society,” by singling out the “foreign trash,” Yang argues he was “protecting the reputation of decent Westerners.”
However, he stood by his comments on Al Jazeera and the “foreign shrew,” a reference to Al Jazeera correspondent, Melissa Chan, who earlier this month became the first foreign reporter to be expelled from China in more than a decade.
Yang remains unapologetic about his characterization of Chan, only making the point that translations of his post had mislabeled her “b—ch” instead of “shrew.”
China is currently investing millions of dollars into what have been branded as “soft power” initiatives, designed to improve the mainland’s global standing. They include the development of enterprises such as CCTV America, China’s new 24-hour cable news channel seen in the United States, which is meant to provide a more polished and China-centric interpretation of world news.
The success of such programming will rely significantly on China’s willingness to provide a measured and open look at itself. But that willingness looks threatened by rhetoric such as Yang's.
Update:
Popular purveyors of animated news media, Next Media Animation, have also looked at the Yang Rui issue:
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