Doing business in China: January 2009 Archives

The New Straits Times Press (Malayasia) - By BERNAMA
January 29, 2009

Malaysia Airlines (MAS) has removed chicken from its inflight menu for flights out of China, effective today.

This follows the government's indefinite ban on chicken imports from that country.

In a statement here, the airline said fish, mixed seafood and beef would be served, depending on the sectors.

However, it said chicken would remain on the menu for flights out of Malaysia, as the meat here is sourced from local farms.

Its general manager for inflight services, Hayati Ali said the safety of passengers was the priority for MAS.

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By Karl Malakunas - Agence France Presse | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
January 23, 2009

Angry parents of victims in China's milk scandal accused the government Friday of holding show trials and giving little help to their sick children, after the high-profile sentencing of 21 people.

A court in northern China on Thursday gave two men the death penalty and jailed 18 others for terms ranging from two years to life for their roles in the poisoning of milk last year with the industrial chemical melamine.

The melamine was mixed into watered-down milk in what was apparently a widespread practice to give dairy products the appearance of higher protein content.

The state-run media said the verdicts had delivered justice to the families of the six babies who died and nearly 300,000 others who fell ill after drinking the contaminated milk last year.

But parents contacted by AFP disagreed.

"Of course the verdicts are not just, especially the verdict of Tian Wenhua," said Li Xuemei, the mother of a sick baby, referring to a life term given to the former boss of the main dairy firm implicated in the scandal.

Li and other parents wanted the death penalty for Tian, 66, a former member of China's ruling Communist Party and head of the Sanlu dairy company who is the highest-profile person to have faced court over the scandal.

They questioned whether she may have got a lighter sentence because of her contacts with powerful people.

They also asked why no government officials had been charged, while referring to long-standing accusations that local authorities in the northern city of Shijiazhuang where Sanlu is based were part of a cover up.

"So far no-one in the Shijiazhuang government has been punished," said Ma Hongbin, the father of a sick baby in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, who is informally representing other parents.

>> Complete report

By Michael Bristow | BBC World News
January 21, 2009

China has censored parts of the new US president's inauguration speech that have appeared on a number of websites.

Live footage of the event on state television also cut away from Barack Obama when communism was mentioned.

China's leaders appear to have been upset by references to facing down communism and silencing dissent.

English-language versions of the speech have been allowed on the internet, but many of the Chinese translations have omitted sensitive sections.

Selective editing

China keeps a firm grip on the country's media outlets and censors their news reports as a matter of routine.

Like the rest of the world, it has been keenly following developments in the United States; President Obama's inauguration was front page news.

But the authorities seem not to want ordinary Chinese people to read the full, unexpurgated version of the president's speech.

In his inauguration address, President Obama said: "Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions."

That entire passage was retained for an English-language version of the speech that appeared on the website of state-run Xinhua news agency.

But in the Chinese-language version, the word "communism" was taken out.

President Obama's comments addressed to world leaders who "blame their society's ills on the West" also fell foul of the censor's red pen.

"To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history," the president said.

Once again, Xinhua included the passage in full in its English version, but the sentence was taken out of the Chinese translation.

Similar changes were made to versions of the speech that appeared on other websites based in China.

And websites were not the only media organisations that struggled to report some of the comments made by President Obama.

China Central Television, the country's main broadcaster, aired the speech live with a simultaneous Chinese translation.

But when the translator got to the part where President Obama talked about facing down communism, her voice suddenly faded away.

The programme suddenly cut back to the studio, where an off-guard presenter had to quickly ask a guest a question.

Censoring sensitive news reports is nothing new in China, where officials go to great lengths to cut critical material.

These officials appear a little nervous about the arrival of a new US President, who might not be as friendly to China as President George W. Bush.

As an editorial in the state-run China Daily put it: "Given the popular American eagerness for a break from the Bush years, many wonder, or worry to be precise, whether the new president would ignore the hard-earned progress in bilateral ties."

>> Original source

By Edward Wong | THE NEW YORK TIMES
January 16, 2009

A legal advocate who was arrested after applying to hold a protest in Beijing during the Olympic Games in August has been sentenced to three years in prison, said a lawyer who has been asked to represent the man in the appeals process.

The advocate, Ji Sizun, 58, was sentenced on Jan. 7 by a judge in the city of Fuzhou for forging official seals and documents, the lawyer, Lin Kaihua, said Thursday.

Mr. Ji was one of many victims of a tactic employed by the central government during the Beijing Olympics that has angered human rights advocates and has raised questions about whether the International Olympic Committee should have put more pressure on the Chinese government to respect human rights and freedom of speech.

In the prelude to the Games, the government announced that it had designated three parks in Beijing as legal protest zones and that anyone could apply to hold protests in them. When people did apply, however, their requests were ignored or they were detained and arrested.

The government did not allow a single protest to be held in any of the parks. In the most infamous incident of would-be protesters being arrested, two women in their 70s were detained for applying to hold a protest over a land dispute. The women were sentenced to re-education through labor, a punishment handed down to dissidents without judicial review.

Mr. Ji, from the coastal province of Fujian, met with a similar fate. He arrived in Beijing planning to hold a protest against government corruption, an issue that angers many Chinese and that undermines the legitimacy of the government.

On Aug. 9, Mr. Ji went to the Deshengmenwai police station to apply for a permit to protest at the Purple Bamboo Park, one of the three designated protest areas. Mr. Ji had several reporters accompany him because he feared being arrested. He tried to submit his application but was questioned intensely by police officers. The reporters who accompanied him said they were harassed. Mr. Ji left the station that day, but returned two days later to check on the status of his application. The police arrested him then.

He was sentenced by the Taijiang District People's Court in Fuzhou. No one answered the telephone at the court when calls were made seeking comment on Thursday.

Mr. Lin, the lawyer, said that Mr. Ji had asked for his representation during the appeals process but had yet to raise the money to pay the legal fees.

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting.

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