Because China

[DougRichards]

Don't trust Chinese zoos with your animals

 

http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/animals/kangaroos-killed-in-chinese-zoo-by-rock-throwing-visitors/news-story/b31914c815da341d3df837710db82e86

 

VISITORS to a zoo in southeastern China killed one kangaroo and injured another by throwing bricks at them in an attempt to get a reaction from the big marsupials, state media reported.

A 12-year-old female kangaroo suffered a severely injured foot when it was struck by bricks and concrete chunks on February 28 at the Fuzhou Zoo in Fujian province, China Central Television reported.

 

The kangaroo died days later and an examination by a veterinarian revealed that the cause of death was likely a ruptured kidney caused by being struck by the projectiles.

 

A few weeks later, a five-year-old male kangaroo at the same zoo was slightly injured in a similar way, said the report posted on the network’s website late on Thursday.

 

The report included pictures of the first kangaroo’s smashed and nearly severed foot, and of the animal receiving treatment via intravenous drip before it died.

Visitors to the zoo were known to try to provoke the Australia marsupials to get them to display their signature hopping mode of locomotion using their powerful hind legs.

 

The report did not mention whether anyone was punished over the matter, but it said the dead female would be stuffed and put on display and the zoo would look to install security cameras to deter visitors from harming animals in future.

 

China’s lightly regulated zoos and wildlife parks often make news for the wrong reasons, typically involving abysmal conditions in which animals are kept or insensitive actions by visitors in a country where the notion of animal rights is not deeply ingrained.

 

Among recent examples, horrified visitors to an animal park in eastern China’s Jiangsu province last June watched as tigers killed a donkey that was released into their enclosure by investors angry over a business dispute related to the zoo,

[Panzermann]

The spoiled brats of one-child-policy. Poor animals.

[Jeff]

Science calls bullshit on China's 'AK-47 laser gun'

[MiloMorai]

MagiDeal 1:48 WWII Spitfire Interceptor Fighter Helicopter Assemble Kit Toy

 

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/MagiDeal-1-48-WWII-Spitfire-Interceptor-Fighter-Helicopter-Assemble-Kit-Toy/292582479212?hash=item441f46556c:g:eMwAAOSw8hBbDBQj

[JasonJ]

 

 

China is using fake LinkedIn profiles to gather information on German officials and politicians, the German intelligence agency (BfV) has said.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42304297

https://www.dw.com/en/china-tried-to-spy-on-german-parliament-report/a-44548172

[DB]

China is killing the ozone layer. Remember that?

 

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/09/mysterious-source-of-illegal-ozone-killing-emissions-revealed-say-investigators

[MiloMorai]

China bans Winne the Poo movie.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/china-bans-winnie-the-pooh-film-to-stop-comparisons-to-president-xi

[toysoldier]

China bans Winne the Poo movie.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/china-bans-winnie-the-pooh-film-to-stop-comparisons-to-president-xi

man you gotta put the pictures up, austerity be damn. its gold.

[Roman Alymov]

China bans Winne the Poo movie.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/china-bans-winnie-the-pooh-film-to-stop-comparisons-to-president-xi

Strange. Winne the Poo is one of The Walt Disney Co. key assets, and Disney CEO Bob Iger is, as far as I remember, chairman of US-China trade commetee…

[Josh]

China stronk! And has no desire for honey apparently.

[Murph]

China reverses one child policy, new policy is: "Hey you kids get busy, we need more babies!".

[toysoldier]

A bubble bursts in China.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-lenders-p2p-insight/beijing-struggles-to-defuse-anger-over-chinas-p2p-lending-crisis-idUSKBN1KX077

 

Beijing struggles to defuse anger over China's P2P lending crisis

Shu Zhang, Elias Glenn

BEIJING (Reuters) - Peter Wang was asleep at his home in Beijing last Monday when police officers arrived before dawn to detain him, saying he had helped organize a protest planned for later that day.

Across the city, others who had lost money investing in China’s online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms - including some who had traveled from as far away as Shandong and Shanxi provinces - got similar visits from police.

By the time they were released, the demonstration they had planned using social media chat groups had fizzled amid a massive security response around the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) headquarters in the heart of Beijing’s financial district.

Instead of demanding that the government bail out the hundreds of collapsed P2P companies, those who made it to the protest area were forced onto buses and carted away to Jiujingzhuang, a holding center for petitioners on the outskirts of Beijing, according to two P2P investors.

“Once the police checked your ID cards and saw your petition materials, they knew you are here looking to protect your rights. Then they put you on a bus directly,” said Wang, who works at an auto repair shop. He joined a separate, smaller protest in a different part of Beijing after his detention. “There was no channel to solve any problems. All they care about was preventing any disturbance.”

The size of China’s P2P industry is far bigger than in the rest of the world combined, with outstanding loans of 1.49 trillion yuan ($217.96 billion), according to data tracker p2p001.com, run by the Shenzhen Qiancheng Internet Finance Research Institute.

P2P, in which platforms gather funds from retail investors and loan the money to small corporate and individual borrowers, promising high returns, started flourishing nearly unregulated in China in 2011. At its peak in 2015, there were about 3,500 such businesses.

But after Beijing began a campaign to defuse debt bubbles and reduce risks in the economy, including the country’s enormous non-bank lending sector, cracks began to appear as investors pulled their funds.

Since June, 243 online lending platforms have gone bust, according to wdzj.com, another P2P industry data provider. In that period, the industry saw its first monthly net fund outflows since at least 2014, the data provider said.

The latest burst of anger, which led to the planned protests, flared up ahead of a June 30 deadline for companies to comply with new business practice standards, which are still being finalised.

Many of them shut down rather than face tougher regulations, Zane Wang, chief executive of online micro-loan provider China Rapid Finance (XRF.N), told Reuters. That caused panic in the broader market. Investors tried to pull funds from P2P companies, causing liquidity problems for many smaller operators, Wang said, although larger ones are faring better. “Some platforms might become a winner out of this, and some platforms, probably a large portion of the platforms, might not be able to make it,” he said.

China’s propaganda machine has swung into action as Beijing seeks to reassure people that the Chinese economy and financial markets are healthy despite a trade war with the United States and steep declines in the value of stock prices and the yuan.

No mainland Chinese media - official mainstream papers or more independent-leaning publications - reported the attempts to protest in China’s capital.

Many would-be protesters were forced to give fingerprints and blood samples and prevented from traveling to Beijing. Some were even removed from Beijing-bound trains ahead of the protests, said a Shanghai-based P2P investor who lost 1.3 million yuan. She declined to be named out of fear for her safety.

Even after the demonstrations were effectively snuffed out, hundreds of security personnel patrolled around CBIRC’s office, highlighting authorities’ sensitivity to any form of social instability.

The CBIRC did not respond to an emailed request seeking comment. The Ministry of Public Security did not respond to a fax seeking comment.

On Sunday, state media outlet Xinhua reported that the government has proposed 10 measures to reduce risk in the P2P sector, including a strict ban on new P2P companies and online finance platforms, and a blacklist under China’s social credit rating system for those who don’t repay their loans.

MESSY CLEAN-UP

Peer-to-peer lending was pioneered by firms like LendingClub (LC.N) in the United States, but in China it has expanded on a massive scale as firms piggy-backed on the government’s drive for financial innovation to serve credit-starved small and mid-sized private companies.

The industry expanded too fast for regulators to keep up.

Many P2P platforms lend to customers that might be deemed too risky for a commercial bank. That has in cases led to liquidity crises, when too many investors demand their funds at once if loans appear to be going south.

There have also been cases of outright fraud, the most well-known being Ezubao - a $7.6 billion Ponzi scam involving more than 900,000 investors.

More than 100 companies listed in China’s domestic stock markets are involved in P2P operations, and 32 of those own more than 30 percent of a P2P company, according to a July research report by CITIC Securities.

China extended by two years a separate June 30 deadline for an online finance clean-up campaign. But rather than calming matters, it created more uncertainty, market watchers said.

CITIC Securities estimated that under the clean-up campaign, only about 100 platforms out of 1,836 would be able to meet even today’s regulatory standards and obtain a license. Less than 50 would thrive.

Experts say larger companies would probably benefit from firmer regulation. But for now, listed companies in the industry have seen their share prices take a beating.

Shares of some of the Chinese P2P companies listed in the U.S. have plunged. China Rapid Finance shares have lost 73 percent so far this year, while Yirendai (YRD.N) has slumped 71 percent. PPDai (PPDF.N) has dropped 44 percent, and Hexindai (HX.O) 27 percent.

Officials with PPDai declined to comment.

In a news release, Hexindai said it would improve risk management “and further reduce credit risk.”

Tang Ning, founder and chief executive officer of CreditEase, the majority owner of P2P lending platform Yirendai, told Reuters that he was concerned that the “industry-wide panic” would escalate.

He urged regulators to “act with a sense of urgency” to protect good P2P companies while punishing bad players to avoid harming China’s financial system and economy.

“Otherwise, it will be ‘winter’ for the industry. All companies will be hit, both illicit and compliant. Everyone will lose and that’s a situation no one wants to see,” said Tang. “Small businesses will lose an important, or the most important source of funding. That’s not only hurting the financial system but also the real economy.”

For Wang, the Beijing investor, the pain is acute. He and his family had invested 7 million yuan - their life savings, with which they had planned to use to buy a home at the end of the year - in two P2P platforms that have shut down.

They recovered none of their investment.

“We are financial refugees, not mobsters. The only thing we want is to get back our money, at least a portion of it,” said Wang.

[Panzermann]

P2P lending platform? What could possibly go wrong?

 

 

---

 

China reverses one child policy, new policy is: "Hey you kids get busy, we need more babies!".

They could start with registering all the unregistered children form the last three decades. There seems to be quite a lot of those, that parents just did not report to the authorities.

Edited August 19, 2018 by Panzermann

[DB]

Ah. Chinese population statistics are unreliable? It's not just economic growth, then.

[JasonJ]

China banned a Japanese reporter (Sankei) from covering a diplomatic event. The other Japanese reporters, even from Asahi, boycotted the event as a result.

 

 

BEIJING--Japanese reporters boycotted a high-level diplomatic meeting between Japan and China after a journalist from the conservative Sankei Shimbun was singled out and banned from covering the Aug. 29 event.

Visiting Vice Foreign Minister Takeo Akiba met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that day, but shortly before the planned talks, the Chinese Foreign Ministry informed the Japanese Embassy here that the Sankei Shimbun reporter would not be permitted to be one of the five Japanese reporters chosen to cover the opening of the Akiba-Wang meeting.

The other Japanese media outlets in Beijing, including The Asahi Shimbun, informed the embassy that the Chinese Foreign Ministry move effectively rejected the formation of a pool of reporters, and as a result, no Japanese reporter covered the meeting.

The Japanese Embassy limited reporters covering the meeting to five members of a pool. A draw was held to choose the five representatives to make up the group.

According to an embassy official, the Chinese Foreign Ministry later informed the embassy that the Sankei Shimbun reporter would not be allowed in the pool based “on Foreign Ministry policy.”

After the meeting, Akiba met with Japanese reporters and said “a very good atmosphere” was established during talks held to coordinate a visit to China before the end of the year by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency quoted Wang as saying during his meeting with Akiba that China-Japan ties had returned to their “normal course” and added that the two sides should work as partners without antagonism, saying that “China’s development was an opportunity for Japan, not a threat.”

Akiba later met with his Chinese counterpart, Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng, who has long experience with Russia. Akiba asked Le for advice about resolving territorial disputes with Russia, apparently in reference to Japan’s dispute with Moscow over the Northern Territories off the coast of Hokkaido, the main northernmost island.

Akiba also protested the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s rejection of the Sankei reporter.

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201808300040.html

[Panzermann]

Wikipedia calls Sankei a right-wing and conservative newspaper, so I guess this is about denial of japan's deeds in WW2 in the newspaper in the past? And consequently is blacklisted by the PRC government?

[Josh]

Ah. Chinese population statistics are unreliable? It's not just economic growth, then.

There is a theory that the inbalance between the sexes in China isn't actually as pronounced as it appears to be and that the official numbers of male and female citizens is lopsided because rural families tended to not report their female offspring rather than commit infanticide. Which sounds pretty believable given the state of record keeping in the previous century.

Edited August 30, 2018 by Josh

[JasonJ]

Wikipedia calls Sankei a right-wing and conservative newspaper, so I guess this is about denial of japan's deeds in WW2 in the newspaper in the past? And consequently is blacklisted by the PRC government?

 

Sankei is right wing as I have pointed out here or here and a few other places whenever media bias is talked about and I put in the Japanese angle, just to be clear.

 

Sankei is more critical of China than most other media outlets, which is a good thing. They also have made a number of good military related articles and I have posted them up to TN before several times. To me, it is China doing exactly what they do internally, banning critical media. Is Sankei denialists? I haven't noticed it. Here's an article dated February 2018 about a private study group choosing the terms for things like the Nanking massacre for World History classes and Japanese History classes. At the end of the Sankei article there is a description of the term "Nankin Incident" which is:

【用語解説】南京事件

 

１９３７（昭和１２）年１２月、当時の中華民国の首都だった南京陥落後、日本軍の占領下で起きたとされる事件。犠牲者数について中国側は「３０万人」と主張するが、日本では近年の研究により誇大－との見方が定着。数万人説などがあり、存否についても論争がある。日本政府は「非戦闘員の殺害や略奪行為などがあったことは否定できない」との見解を示している。

 

"Term explanation" Nankin Incident

An incident that occurred under the occupation of the Japanese army after the fall of what was the capital for the Republic of China in December 1937 (Showa 12). About the number of victims, the China side argues "300,000" whereas according to modern day research in Japan the view that that is hyperbolic has taken root. There are explanations for several 10,000s and there is controversy about the existence of it at all. The Japanese government takes the view that "it cannot be denied noncombatants were murdered and that there was actions such as looting.

https://www.sankei.com/life/news/180219/lif1802190005-n3.html

 

Earlier, Sankei was denied permission to attend a Nankin Massacre ceremony that was held on December 13th 2017 at the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre. A Sankei article about it adds that in 2014, the day was upgraded to National Mourning Day in which Xi Jinping participated for the first time. The article also says that the 2017 ceremony comes after Xi Jinping has entered into his second term following the Communist Party Convention in October. And that the Communists Party renewed "Victory in the War against Japan" as a means of solidifying the Communist Party's control in China with a very one-sided justification along with an aim to summon up a uniting force from the people in China.

 

 

　【南京＝河崎真澄】日中戦争時の１９３７年に旧日本軍による南京占領で起きたとされる「南京事件」から８０年を迎えた１３日、江蘇省南京市の「南京大虐殺記念館」で午前１０時（日本時間同１１時）に追悼式典が始まった。同式典には３年ぶりに習近平国家主席が出席した。中国中央テレビ（ＣＣＴＶ）などが報じた。

 

　１３日の追悼式典に関し産経新聞は、規定通り中国外務省に取材の申請を行ったが、会場への立ち入りが認められる記者証の発給を拒否された。これに対し同省は、「共産党中央宣伝部の指示に従った」と回答。一方で、党中央宣伝部からの説明は得られなかった。

 

　中国は２０１４年に南京事件の１２月１３日を「国家哀悼日」に格上げ。この年に初めて習氏が出席した。

 

　今年は事件から８０周年という“節目”の年にあたるほか、「強国」建設を掲げた１０月の共産党大会を経て習指導部が２期目に入ったタイミング。「抗日戦への勝利」を改めて強調することで、共産党の中国統治を一方的に正当化するとともに、国内からの求心力を高める狙いがありそうだ。

 

 

https://www.sankei.com/world/news/171213/wor1712130015-n1.html

 

So yeah, the CCP probably doesn't like such analysis.

Edited August 31, 2018 by JasonJ

[JasonJ]

Canadian reporter asks about Hong Kong booksellers, South China Sea expansion, etc, to Foreign Minster Wang while in Canada for economic talks. He starts off with "Your question is full of prejudice and against China, blah blah blah, etc"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qikBsQ1h4S8

Edited August 31, 2018 by JasonJ

[toysoldier]

LOL they can't really handle free press can they?

[Nobu]

China is trying to muzzle Sankei the same way Abe has been trying to muzzle Asahi in various ways for the past 3 years.

 

I don't expect much from China and Chinese. I do expect better from Japan and Japanese, however.

[JasonJ]

Muzzle Asahi how?

[Nobu]

Reported on for a number of years now, unfortunately, by the New York Times, FP, the Office of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, and the Columbia Journalism Review.

 

[JasonJ]

Come on... links or something.

[Nobu]

Come on... links or something.

 

The New York Times:

Effort by Japan to Stifle News Media Is Working

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/world/asia/in-japan-bid-to-stifle-media-is-working.html

The New York Times / By Martin Fackler / April 26, 2015

 

FP:

The Silencing of Japan’s Free Press

https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/27/the-silencing-of-japans-free-press-shinzo-abe-media/

Foreign Policy / By Martin Fackler / May 27, 2016

 

The Office of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression:

Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression on his mission to Japan

http://hrn.or.jp/wpHN/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/A_HRC_35_22_Add.1_AUV.pdf

UN Human Rights Council Thirty-fifth session / Advance unedited edition / 29 May 2017

 

British coverage of the report of the UN Special Rapporteur:

Japan accused of eroding press freedom by UN special rapporteur

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/13/japan-accused-of-eroding-press-freedom-by-un-special-rapporteur

The Guardian / By Justin McCurry / Tue 13 Jun 2017

 

The Columbia Journalism Review:

Sinking a bold foray into watchdog journalism in Japan

https://www.cjr.org/the_feature/asahi_shimbun_japan_journalism.php

CJR / By Martin Fackler / October 25, 2016

Will the Japanese media stand up for press freedom?

https://www.cjr.org/opinion/japanese-media-shinzo-abe.php

CJR / By Joel Simon / June 9 2017