Salon.com > China

“Iron Man 3″ box office hit in China

Thu, 02 May 2013 18:15:00 +0000

Despite the minor controversy sparked by product placement in its made-for-China scenes, "Iron Man 3" garnered almost $21 million in the Chinese box office, topping the one-day sales record set by “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” in 2011.

From the Hollywood Reporter:

Online reactions to the film have been largely positive, but bloggers appear united in their consternation of the deliberate product placement that sees new a character named Dr Wu (played by mainland Chinese actor Wang Xueqi) consume a [milk] carton of Gu Li Duo.

Not that audiences outside mainland China will get a glimpse of this, though: this scene is part of the film’s China release, a version which is four minutes longer than the normal cut seen everywhere else in the world.

"Transformers 4" is the next Hollywood studios film expected to follow the similar model of dual version releases.

Repeal the sequester, already!

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:02:00 +0000

Economic forecasters exist to make astrologers look good. Most had forecast growth of at least 3 percent (on an annualized basis) in the first quarter. But we learned this morning (in the Commerce Department’s report) it grew only 2.5 percent.

That’s better than the 2 percent growth last year and the slowdown at the end of the year. But it’s still cause for serious concern.

First, consumers won’t keep up the spending. Their savings rate fell sharply — from 4.7 percent in the last quarter of 2012 to 2.6 percent from January through March.

Add in March’s dismal employment report, the lowest percentage of working-age adults in jobs since 1979, and January’s hike in payroll taxes, and consumer spending will almost certainly drop.

Median household incomes continue to decline, adjusted for inflation. Another report out today showed consumer confidence fell in April.

Second, the recovery continues to be wildly lopsided. The only thing really keeping it going is the rip-roaring stock market. But the stock market only boosts the wealth of the richest 10 percent of Americans, who own 90 percent of stocks (including 401K retirement accounts).

How scared should we be of avian flu?

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:52:00 +0000

The most recent outbreak of avian flu, the strain H7N9, has killed 22 people and infected 108. The cases were thought to be contained within China until Wednesday, when a Taiwanese man was confirmed to be infected with the virus.

As more cases appear, the death toll rises and so does the fear. But are the fears founded?

GlobalPost talked to Dr. Neil Fishman, associate chief medical officer at the University of Pennsylvania Health System, about where to focus efforts to quell the outbreak, how the press is handling the news and just how likely it is that humans will one day transfer the virus to other humans.

GlobalPost: The current flu strain has been found in disparate areas of China. How does the wide spread of cases affect efforts to combat the virus?

Dr. Neil Fishman: There’s two critical things that are promising. One is that the virus has not been isolated in migratory birds. It’s only been found in chickens, ducks and pigeons in live poultry markets, so that makes it potentially easier to manage.

“Django Unchained” reportedly gets another release date in China

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Quentin Tarantino's slave western "Django Unchained" was poised to be the director's first commercial release in China, a country notorious for its strict censorship regulations. Though the film had been edited and scheduled for release on April 11, Chinese officials abruptly pulled the movie without citing why.

After another round of edits, the film may have another shot in China, however. From the Guardian:

Fox “liberal:” No more Muslim or Chinese immigrants for a while

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:30:00 +0000

In the pantheon of dumb responses to the Boston Marathon bombing, this just might take the cake. Bob Beckel, the token liberal and politically incorrect comic relief on Fox News' "The Five" roundtable show, said today that we should stop allowing Muslim students to come to the United States for a little while, at least until we can deal with all the ones who are here now:

“I think we really have to consider, given the fact so many people hate us, that we're going to have to cut off Muslim students coming to this country for some period of time so that we can absorb what we've got and look at what we've got and decide whether some of the people here should be going, be sent home or sent to prison."

Later, Beckel took a moment to clarify and backpedal a bit "before I get complaints." Instead, he added Chinese students to the list of personas non grata, because, he said, they will just end up hacking us:

180 killed, 11,000 injured in Chinese earthquake

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:55:00 +0000

YA'AN, China (AP) — Rescuers and relief teams struggled to rush supplies into the rural hills of China's Sichuan province Sunday after an earthquake left at least 180 people dead and more than 11,000 injured and prompted frightened survivors to spend a night in cars, tents and makeshift shelters.

The earthquake Saturday morning triggered landslides that cut off roads and disrupted phone and power connections in mountainous Lushan county, in Sichuan's Ya'an city area, which is further south on the same fault line where a devastating quake wreaked widespread damage across the region five years ago.

Hardest hit were villages further up the valleys, where farmers grow rice, vegetables and corn on terraced plots. Rescuers hiked into neighboring Baoxing county after its roads were cut off, reaching it overnight, state media reported. In Longmen village, authorities said nearly all the buildings had been destroyed in a frightening minute-long shaking by the quake.

In the fog-covered town of Shuangli, corn farmer Zheng Xianlan said Sunday that she had rushed from the fields back to her home when the quake struck, and cried when she saw that the roof collapsed. She then spent the night outdoors on a worn sofa using a plastic raincoat for cover.

Death toll of Chinese earthquake climbs to 156

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 15:13:00 +0000

BEIJING (AP) — A powerful earthquake struck the steep hills of China's southwestern Sichuan province on Saturday, leaving at least 156 people dead and more than 5,500 injured, nearly five years after a devastating quake wreaked widespread damage across the region.

Saturday's quake, while not as destructive as the one in 2008, toppled buildings, triggered landslides and disrupted phone and power connections in mountainous Lushan county. The village of Longmen was hit particularly hard, with authorities saying nearly all the buildings there had been destroyed in a frightening minute-long shaking by the quake.

"It was such a big quake that everyone was scared," said a woman who answered the phone at a kindergarten hours later and declined to give her name. "We all fled for our lives."

Rescuers turned the square outside the Lushan County Hospital into a triage center, where medical personnel bandaged bleeding victims, according to footage on China Central Television. Rescuers dynamited boulders that had fallen across roads to reach Longmen and other damaged areas lying farther up the mountain valleys, state media reported.

124 dead; thousands injured in Chinese earthquake

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:05:00 +0000

BEIJING (AP) — A powerful earthquake struck the steep hills of China's southwestern Sichuan province Saturday, leaving at least 124 people dead and more than 2,600 injured, nearly five years after a devastating quake wreaked widespread damage across the region.

Saturday's quake, while not as destructive as that in 2008, toppled buildings, triggered landslides and disrupted phone and power connections in mountainous Lushan county. The village of Longmen was hit particularly hard, with authorities saying nearly all the buildings there had been destroyed in a frightening minute-long shaking by the quake.

"It was such a big quake that everyone was scared," said a woman who answered a phone at a kindergarten hours later and declined to give her name. "We all fled for our lives."

Apple named in Chinese porn probe

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:37:00 +0000

Apple's already contentious relationship with China has just taken a turn for the worse. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the computer giant has turned up on a list of companies named in a Chinese porn probe for allegedly offering illicit material on their web sites and app stores.

Third marathon victim is Chinese national

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:00:00 +0000

BEIJING - The third person killed in the Boston Marathon bombings was a Chinese graduate student at Boston University originally from China's northeastern city of Shenyang, a state-run Chinese newspaper reported today.

The Shenyang Evening News said on its official Twitter-like microblog account that the victim's name is Lu Lingzi. An editor at the newspaper said that Lu's father confirmed his daughter's death when reporters visited the family home. The editor declined to give his name because he was not authorized to speak to foreign media.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry and Consulate General in New York are not releasing the victim's name at the request of the family. But on Tuesday, Boston media quoted a Chinese Consulate General official as saying Chinese national Lu Lingzi was missing in the wake of Monday's bombings that killed three and wounded more than 170 people.

Martin Richard, 8, of the Dorchester section of Boston, and Krystle Campbell, of Medford, a 29-year-old restaurant manager, also died in the bombing.

In the Chinese-language world of social media, people have been sharing their condolences on what is believed to be Lu's microblogging account hosted by Sina Weibo, which was last updated Monday with a breakfast photo. By early Wednesday afternoon, more than 14,000 comments were left on the page.

Friends contacted through Sina Weibo have largely declined to speak to media about Lu, saying they were adhering to the wishes of Lu's family.

Lu graduated from a Shenyang high school and studied international trade at Beijing Institute of Technology before she went to the United States to study statistics as a graduate student at Boston University, according to media reports, Lu's friends and her own Facebook page.

Chinese are the largest contingent of foreign students at U.S. colleges and universities. Last year, nearly 200,000 Chinese were enrolled in U.S. higher education institutions, and Massachusetts had almost 10,000 Chinese students on its college campuses, according to the Institute of International Education.

Chinese bird flu epidemic spreads to Beijing

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:04:00 +0000

BEIJING (AP) — A new case of bird flu in China's capital, a 4-year-old boy who displayed no symptoms, is adding to the unknowns about the latest outbreak that has caused 63 confirmed cases and 14 deaths, health officials said Monday.

The boy, who tested positive for the H7N9 virus, is considered a carrier of the strain and has been placed under observation to see if he develops symptoms, health authorities said. Medical teams found the boy in a check of people who had contact with a 7-year-old girl, who was confirmed as Beijing's first case of H7N9 over the weekend: a neighbor of the boy bought chicken from the girl's family.

Beijing Health Bureau deputy director Zhong Dongpo said that, as puzzling as the case is, the boy adds another data point to medical experts limited understanding of H7N9.

"This is very meaningful because it shows that the disease caused by this virus has a wide scope. It's not only limited to critical symptoms. There can also be slight cases, and even those who don't feel any abnormality at all. So we need to understand this disease in a rational and scientific way," Zhong said at a news briefing.

China cancels “Django Unchained” premiere

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:47:00 +0000

Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" was set to premiere in China on Thursday, marking the director's first film with a commercial release in China--except that Chinese censors have pulled the movie from theaters.

Deadline first reported the news, which caught Sony Pictures off-guard:

The studio which is releasing the blockbuster film internationally was caught by surprise, prompting studio spokesman Steve Elzer to tell me tonight: “We regret that Django Unchained has been removed from theaters and are working with the Chinese authorities to determine whether the film can be rescheduled.” In some cinemas, screenings were stopped after one minute of footage was shown “because of technical reasons … for the time being,” according to a notice distributed to cinema companies. It quoted unnamed industry insiders as saying that nudity prompted the sudden cancellations despite its official pre-release review.

Despite the nudity, the cancellation has puzzled executives since it comes after the movie had been edited to comply with notoriously stringent Chinese censorship regulations.

House revives cyber bill maligned by privacy groups

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 22:15:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Intelligence Committee is trying to revive legislation that would let industry and the federal government swap information on the latest cyber threats.

The bill stalled last year after privacy advocates said it would open American's private Internet records like bank accounts and email to agencies such as the FBI and National Security Agency.

But with fresh accusations from industry that the Chinese government is hacking into U.S. networks and stealing billions of dollars in trade secrets, Reps. Mike Rogers of Michigan and Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland say they think the bill can become law with some changes.

The House panel plans to mark up the legislation on Wednesday, with a floor vote possible next week. Its prospects in the Senate and at the White House are unclear.

Meet the billionaire survivalists

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 15:00:00 +0000

A recent article from Vanity Fair paints a curious picture of London’s well-heeled Knightsbridge, a neighborhood of quaint Victorian houses and elegant hotels serving high tea. Today, a ginormous complex of concrete and metal towers looms above; a development some call the world’s most exclusive address. Though London has long been a place where the cops don’t even carry guns, security is the watchword at One Hyde Park: high-tech panic rooms, bulletproof glass and “bowler-hatted guards trained by British Special Forces” offer residents the promise of perfect safety and privacy in luxurious surroundings.

Only, nobody really lives there. At night, the building is nearly pitch-dark despite the fact that most of the units have been sold.

Chinese bird flu toll rises to 6

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 20:08:00 +0000

China killed thousands of birds at Shanghai markets, and shut down all wholesale poultry markets, as the death toll from the H7N9 virus rose to six on April 5th.

Over 20,000 birds were killed at a live bird-trading zone in Shanghai Friday,wrote CNN, including chickens, ducks, geese and pigeons. Every live poultry market in the city will soon be shut.

Vendors complained about killing the birds, wrote the Wall Street Journal, although the Shanghai Agricultural Commission announced farmers would be given 50 percent of the market price of the birds in exchange for carrying out the cull.

"In the past usually you would see chickens dying before any infections occurred in humans, but this time we've seen that many species of poultry actually have no apparent problems, so that makes it difficult because you lose this natural warning sign," said infectious disease expert David Hui to CBC.

“River of Stars”: Picture “Game of Thrones” in China

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 21:20:00 +0000

Much as I look forward to each new episode of "Game of Thrones" and the less-frequent but even more engrossing books in George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series on which the HBO show is based, epic fantasy's Medieval settings can get old. There's nothing inherently wrong with doublets, broadswords and castles, of course, but there's also no reason why so many works in the genre have to adopt them, either. Even novels that deliberately try to break the conventions established by J.R.R. Tolkien and T.H. White have a hard time establishing worlds with a non-European flavor.

Or so I thought until I stumbled upon Guy Gavriel Kay's "Under Heaven," a bewitching tale set in the invented country of Kitai, which is closely patterned after Tang Dynasty China. It was a meeting shaped by audiobooks, since what I was looking for when I found it was a long multi-character story read by my favorite narrator, Simon Vance. Vance has taken me through a dozen books by Anthony Trollope, the entire "A Dance to the Music of Time" sequence by Anthony Powell and miscellaneous other novels by Dickens, Hilary Mantel and V.S. Naipaul. To my ear, he strikes exactly the right balance between distinct characters and the unified sensibility of a third-person omniscient narrator. When I crave the pleasure of being entirely enveloped in the imaginary world of a long novel, I want Vance to read it to me.

Hollywood eyes Chinese audiences in latest movie trailers

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 18:23:00 +0000

China is not expected to overtake the U.S. as the world’s biggest film market until 2020, but it seems that Hollywood movies have already begun catering to a growing Chinese audience.

Most recently, the makers behind the anticipated third-installment of the Marvel superhero series "Iron Man," which was partially shot in China, announced that a different version of the film will be released, and it will differ from what audiences outside of China will see. The Chinese version of the trailer, which can be seen above, also differs from the movie's American trailers, as it more prominently features Chinese actors and settings.

Typically, when China releases its own version of a Hollywood movie, it means the film did not pass the sometimes-arbitrary standards of the nation’s media censorship group, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, which is notorious for censoring anything that could be vaguely interpreted as offensive to China.

Living in a pay-to-win world

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 17:39:00 +0000

Twenty to 30 million new smartphones are entering the Chinese market every month, says Henry Fong, the CEO of Yodo1, a company that specializes in helping Western gaming studios "culturalize" their products for Chinese gamers. Those numbers may be slightly exaggerated but there is no doubt that the market is huge and still growing very fast.

But sheer size doesn't make it easy to crack. Chinese mobile gamers, says Fong, are impatient and utterly unwilling to pay for downloads. If you want to monetize them, you have to grab their attention immediately and figure out how to lure them to make in-app payments.

Impatient? Unwilling to pay for downloads? Chinese gamers sound a lot like American teenagers. If you are wondering where the world of mobile gaming is headed or, even more broadly, where the entire mobile economy is headed, your eyes should be focused on China.

Yodo1 had nine employees at the beginning of 2012, but boasts over 100 now, and is "still hiring like crazy." Fong says the decision to focus on China, where the gaming market has long been notoriously fragmented and difficult to cash in on, was made with the long view in mind.

South Korea prepares for cyber warfare

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 17:12:00 +0000

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea's defense ministry announced Monday it would start preparing for cyber warfare, increasing forces and developing different deterrence scenarios in conjunction with the United States.

The announcement follows last month's hacking attack that brought down the servers of two major banks and three broadcasters in Seoul. The identity of those behind the attacks in March is still under investigation, though there has been some speculative finger pointing at North Korea.

"We will cooperate with the US to prepare measures in cyber policy, technology and information," a senior ministry official said, according to South Korean news agency Yonhap.

Salon.com > China

“Iron Man 3″ box office hit in China

Repeal the sequester, already!

How scared should we be of avian flu?

“Django Unchained” reportedly gets another release date in China

Fox “liberal:” No more Muslim or Chinese immigrants for a while

180 killed, 11,000 injured in Chinese earthquake

Death toll of Chinese earthquake climbs to 156

124 dead; thousands injured in Chinese earthquake

Apple named in Chinese porn probe

Third marathon victim is Chinese national

Chinese bird flu epidemic spreads to Beijing

China cancels “Django Unchained” premiere

House revives cyber bill maligned by privacy groups

Meet the billionaire survivalists

Chinese bird flu toll rises to 6

“River of Stars”: Picture “Game of Thrones” in China

Hollywood eyes Chinese audiences in latest movie trailers

Living in a pay-to-win world

South Korea prepares for cyber warfare

Top 5 investigative videos of the week: Inside the smog capital of the world