tagged w/ Communist China
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Names and faces change - circumstances, not so much.
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China has engineered a propaganda epic for the MTV generation. The two-hour movie has the stirring music, monumental battles and rousing speeches of traditional communist fare. But it is slickly updated into a star-studded procession, with 172 cameos by China's top actors, network news anchors and comedians.
The Founding of a Republic is a centerpiece of the propaganda strategy ahead of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China on Oct. 1.
Martial arts star Jackie Chan is a mustachioed, Cantonese-speaking journalist, while his sparring partner Jet Li has just one line as a Nationalist navy officer.
Zhang Ziyi, the female star of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, is positively dowdy as a female politician in a badly fitting gray suit. Some of China's top filmmakers — directors Chen Kaige and Feng Xiaogang — also have roles in the film.
The stars gave their services for free, just to be part of China's birthday celebrations, and perhaps to curry political favor. According to the movie's Web site, it cost just over $4 million to make — less than one-third of Jackie Chan's paycheck for Rush Hour 2.China has engineered a propaganda epic for the MTV generation. The two-hour movie has... more
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Mr. Chen and his comrades had just been given chilling orders: to clear the symbolic heart of the nation, even if it meant spilling blood.
Twenty years after Chinese troops shot their way into the center of Beijing, killing hundreds of people and wounding many more, Mr. Chen provided a rare window into the military crackdown that re-established the Communist Party’s supremacy after six weeks of mass unrest and then, for most Chinese, disappeared in an official whitewash.
Speaking publicly for the first time — and defying security officials who have told him to keep silent — he explained how soldiers from the 65th Group Army dressed in civilian clothes on June 3 and stealthily made their way to the Great Hall on Tiananmen Square’s western edge. At midnight, with clips of ammunition slung across their chests, they faced off against demonstrators, the air filled with the singing of students and the sound of gunfire.Mr. Chen and his comrades had just been given chilling orders: to clear the symbolic... more
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Chinese authorities have put a Beijing-based writer under house arrest and prevented another from returning home to celebrate the traditional Lunar New Year holiday with his family, amid continuing investigations into a document calling for sweeping political reform.
"The police came to see me again," Beijing-based Liu Di, a member of writers' group Independent Chinese PEN and a signatory to Charter 08, which sparked a wave of interrogations and detentions after its publication online in December.
Charter 08, signed by more than 300 prominent scholars, writers, and rights activists around the country, called for concerned Chinese citizens to rally to bring about change, citing an increasing loss of control by the ruling Communist Party and heightened hostility between the authorities and ordinary people.Chinese authorities have put a Beijing-based writer under house arrest and prevented... more
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BEIJING — China’s leaders scrambled Saturday to contain public dismay over widespread contamination of milk supplies, criticizing local officials for negligence while moving to tamp down criticism of the government’s response.
Officials promised to keep stores supplied with clean milk and set up medical hot lines nationwide to help people cope with one of the worst product safety scandals in years.
Milk and dairy products from 22 companies have been recalled after batches tainted with the industrial chemical melamine sickened more than 6,200 children and left four infants dead from kidney failure.
Trying to shore up public confidence, Premier Wen Jiabao told senior Communist Party members that official misconduct contributed to the milk contamination and earlier product scandals. He demanded they put public safety “at the top of the agenda.”
In a show of concern, Wen’s chief deputy made a highly publicized trip to a dairy region south of Beijing at the center of the scandal, visiting farms, shops and a hospital, where he urged “all-out efforts on medical treatment” for the sick.
The energetic response underscored the deep challenge the crisis poses for the communist leadership. The government has staked its legitimacy in part on competent management of a rapidly developing society, a reputation it hoped would be burnished by last month’s lavish, well-run Beijing Olympics.
But the post-Olympic accolades have been pushed aside, and the scandal is again baring widespread public skepticism about the government’s abilities to get lower level officials to enforce policies and overcome cover-ups of problems.
In the 10 days since the government revealed that Shijiazhuang Sanlu Group sold tainted milk powder and infant formula, sketchy details have exposed one local government cover-up as well as the sale of contaminated milk by China’s biggest dairies, many of them state-owned.
Recalls of Chinese-made dairy products widened Saturday to Japan, which followed the lead of Singapore, while more products were recalled in the self-governing Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macau.
Seeking to rein in criticism, propaganda officials ordered newspapers, TV stations and Web sites to mainly use reports from the government’s official Xinhua News Agency, news employees at two publications reported.
Food and product safety scandals have been a feature of Chinese life. Only last year, the government promised to overhaul inspection procedures after exports of medicines, toys and other products that killed and sickend people in the United States.
Also last year, pet food contaminated with melamine killed thousands of pets in North and South America. The dangerous chemical in the pet food was the same as in the milk scandal -- melamine. Used in making plastics, melamine is high in nitrogen, which registers as protein in tests of milk.
Some of the farmers who sell milk to Chinese food companies are thought to have used melamine to disguise watered-down milk.
BEIJING — China’s leaders scrambled Saturday to contain public dismay over... more
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Every five years these guys get together supposedly to talk about issues like the rural poor and 'transparency.' We'll see what happens.Every five years these guys get together supposedly to talk about issues like the... more
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From the ITN archvives in 1989...
In this classic news report, China Peoples' Liberation Army put down pro-democratic student demonstrations killing hundreds if not thousands of people during the protests in Tian An Men Square.From the ITN archvives in 1989...
In this classic news report, China Peoples'... more
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