Water Ink

One of the unexpected consequences of the sorry story of Akmal Shaikh’s execution is ‘Opium War’ suddenly being mentioned again in the British media. Judging from the posted comments, some seem very surprised to hear that the Chinese still remember the Opium War, which after all happened 170 years ago.

Well the victims’ memories tend to be longer. For many Chinese the Opium War was the turning point of China’s recent history, when a weak and inward looking empire started to crumble, facing a new kind of foreign aggression coming over the sea. Twice under the threat of British warships, China was forced to open ports, sanction opium trade, accept the cession of Hong Kong, and pay a huge indemnity. Many years of humiliation followed.

A few days ago, when the British government went public to ask Chinese government to save Akmal Shaikh’s life, I was worried that his fate had already been sealed. Chinese authorities, even if they were prepared to show clemency, won’t be able to do so in public. Not mention that this was a case that has little sympathy from Chinese public opinions. I don’t know what efforts being made by the British government to save Akmal Shaikh’s life, but going public would certainly push China into an unchangeable position.

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After the chaos of Copenhagen climate change summit, UK’s climate change minister Ed Miliband, proud of his ‘last minute rescue’ of the summit, launched an attack on China, suggesting it’s China’s refusal of giving way that caused the summit’s near collapse. It may seems out of frustration, but blaming China for the failure of Copenhagen is not only unfair, but also missing the point.

What the Copenhagen shows us is that this kind of summit doesn’t work when facing such a complicated and pressing issue. Many were over-optimistic before the summit, hyped by Miliband himself, to expect the countries would smooth over their huge difference and work out a treaty with binding targets that will affect all involved. The summit now looks ill prepared, badly organised, without a solid foundation and well communicated understanding. Trying to knock out a deal while all the participants having their own interests to protect, was not realistic.

All major players came to Copenhagen with their own baggage. China, along with India, Brazil and Russia, doesn’t want the binding carbon emission cutting targets to straightjacket its economic growth. Developing countries like China and African countries rightly feel the injustice of taking the burden of emission cut while the industrialized countries who had burned a large amount of fossil fuels now washed their hands by passing the manufactory to developing countries.

The fatal flaw is that the world leaders failed to bring their people with them. There is no real public pressure for the leaders to do something racial now. President Obama arrived Copenhagen empty handed, and then diverted to attack China for not agreeing an international inspection system. (Do we really like WMD style inspectors jetting around the world searching for secret carbon emission?) He went back to the States somehow claiming victory over China. Yes we know his hands are tied, with a resisting domestic opposition to pacify. But that just illustrates how unhelpful and hollow that Ed Miliband decided to single out China.

It’s sad that after all the efforts of scientists and environmental campaigners, the world population are largely not convinced that they have to do something themselves. But all is not lost. The bright side is that the political will does not seem to diminish despite all the disappointment. I believe China is committed to cut carbon emission because for China there is an opportunity to catch up or even lead the green technologies and low carbon industry, and the leadership sees that.

Post-Copenhagen, people are desperate to find a way forward. But playing the blame game isn’t the way.

A series of short videos were posted on a Chinese video sharing website. You don’t have to know any Chinese to understand it, because you will have probably seen the scenes before somewhere else…

The title of the series, by the way, is Office HipHop Quartet. Besides ‘recreate’ the scenes, the makers – they have credit sequence – of videos are also cheerfully unasamed of the fact that two commericals are bluntly ‘placed’ (it goes way beyond ‘production placement’, without any irony).

Today 56 newspapers from 44 countries have published the same editorial (in 20 different languages) to encourage the delegations at Copenhagen summit to seal a deal to reduce global warming and act on climate change.

I’m proud of the fact that the paper I worked for is the initiator and the two newspapers I’m writing for are the participating Chinese newspapers.

To read the full editorial ‘Fourteen days to seal history’s judgement on this generation‘. Or if you prefer, in Chinese.

Now it’s up the world leaders to take some leadership and make difference in the next two weeks.

Yeeyan, a community-based translation website, has been suspended for several days. When the website contents became inaccessible at the beginning of this month, an apology was posted on its homepage, citing ‘technical problems’. Rumours started to circulate on Twitter that Yeeyan was suspended by the authorities because of some contents seen as ‘improper’. A couple of days later one the founders of Yeeyan Zhao Jiamin confirmed the suspension. There are little details about the reason, and the future of Yeeyan is in doubt.

Valued itself as a website through which its members can ‘discover, translate and read the best internet contents not in Chinese’, Yeeyan has been doing a valuable work of introducing foreign language (mostly English) news and stories to the Chinese readers through an unofficial channel. It ran like a social network. Members of shared interest congregated around specific topics or particular publications before picking up pieces from foreign news sites and translate them into Chinese.

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The 30 seconds ad, which is being shown on major US TV networks, looks to elevate the “Made In China” image. It is said to be commissioned by China’s Ministry of Commerce and sponsored by 4 industry bodies, made by DDB Beijing Guoan Advertising Corp.