Danwei: Controversy over Modern Chinese History Text

Great post and translations by Joel Martinson over at Danwei about the controversy surrounding the recent college textbook, Essentials of Modern Chinese History (中国近现代史纲要). Textbook controversies in East Asia are bit like Florida rainstorms in the summer…a 10-minute intense burst of activity at exactly 3:00 p.m. every day which is soon forgotten when the sun comes back out. Nevertheless…

Shanghai Normal University professor Zhou Yumin is criticizing the textbook for its depiction of western colonialism in China. I added my own thoughts in a long, rambling comment that suggests I need should eat breakfast BEFORE trying to do history in the morning.

Check it out.

June 21st, 2007

Slavery, part II

Seems like somebody was out sick the day the Kool-Aid was passed around at the Annual China Daily staff picnic and KTV party:

China Daily columnist (h/t CDT) You Nuo writes:

The lack of investigative reporting also has to do with the fact that, despite the award ceremonies that appear in the press almost daily, there has never been an award for investigative journalism. In a society where saving face is traditionally more valued than telling the truth, sometimes people have to wait for a problem to reach shocking proportions before they can react to it.

As for the lack of legal enforcement, as quoted by China Youth Daily, Fu said the biggest difficulty he encountered was “the cold-heartedness of law-enforcement authorities”.Government departments in Shanxi “showed little concern and were only passive about taking any action” against local brick kiln owners’ offenses. Some, he said, “attempted in many ways” to block efforts to rescue the child slaves. Fu even told of a labor inspector’s direct exploitation of child workers.

The shock goes beyond the report of the extent of the Shanxi slavery. It reveals that the cause of such rampant challenges to modern law

June 21st, 2007

Slavery

Last week Chinese authorities rescued 500 people–many of them children–from brick factories in Shanxi. The workers had been sold to these kilns by unscrupulous labor agencies and then kept there against their will as slaves, working 18 hours a day under the constant threat of physical abuse. All the while, authorities in the province turned a blind eye to the goings-on at the kilns. (ESWN has translations of Chinese media reports on the incident. Some of the details differ from later accounts in the domestic and foreign press.)

Earlier this month, a group of distraught parents stormed the kilns trying desperately to rescue their children, only to meet stiff resistance from the usual suspects–thugs hired by the kiln owners with support from corrupt local officials.

Frustrated and frantic, the parents went online, writing an open letter and posting it on Dahe. Eventually the letter ended up on the popular Chinese website Tianya and the subsequent internet frenzy forced the government’s hand. Police raided the kilns and freed the workers. As of this week, 168 people have been arrested in connection with the incident.

Such was the outrage that even the normally Kool Aid-soaked editors of the China Daily felt compelled

June 20th, 2007

June 21, 1870–A Day that will live in ABD

Before any of my colleagues back home get on my case…Yes, I do know that today is the 137th anniversary of the Tianjin “Incident/Massacre/Dissertation fodder.”

The lessons so far: Buying orphans is a bad idea because it makes people want to sell you other people’s children, Manchus make bad officials, the French are even worse, and if you’re going to open fire on an intensly hostile crowd itching to dole out a Tianjin-style beat-down, make sure you bring more than a couple of guys.

June 20th, 2007

Public Insecurity in Beijing: The Ubiquitous Bao’an

Nothing is more ubiquitous in Beijing than the brigades of bao’an—the rent-a-cops in their off-teal floppy uniforms guarding (to use a verb loosely) the entrances and exits to apartment buildings, stores, construction sites, restaurants, offices, tourist sites, parks, markets, public urinals, random trees, and the occasional “lone wolf” bao’an standing at attention somewhere for no particular reason at all. Crouching under umbrellas or hiding in hastily constructed guard posts, they watch vigilantly for…I’m not really sure what. I am told constantly by Chinese friends that Americans must feel so unsafe living in the crime-ridden United States, but it is in Beijing where I see “guards” at each gate and where every apartment door is a steel plated monstrosity with wire mesh and three internal locks. When we were looking at apartments, the fact that our complex had a guard put us on another level (we were assured). Mostly it meant a higher rent. I’m not sure why. Our bao’an force consists mostly of four or five teenagers from Hebei slouching around the gates in uniforms—which are ‘uniform’ only in the sense that they are all uniformly two sizes too big—cadging cigarettes from each other. Unless they’ve trained at some secret

June 18th, 2007
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