Why Should I Care About the Power Transition in Beijing?
Posted on by jinge
Category: State Capitalism Watch
Middle Class Losers
Posted on by jinge
On June 4, I was invited to talk about middle class discontent on BBC World’s live program Impact. Since it was June 4, as a self-protection I again spoke optimistically about the future of Chinese middle class. The truth is even my friends and I, considering ourselves part of China’s middle class, often swing between extreme optimism and pessimism about…
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Shanzhai State of Mind
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The literal meaning of Shanzhai (山寨) in Chinese is “stockade village on the mountain”, many factories of Shanzhai products indeed started as small underground workshops in marginalized areas. But Shanzhai has evolved from the synonym of low quality copycat to a mode of production so efficient that even the global tech giants have to take it seriously. Culturally Shanzhai is…
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The IPO Farce of People’s Daily: Washing People’s Brain with People’s Money
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The website of People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the CCP, is now a listed company in the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The company raised 1.4 billion yuan (US$222.2 million) in its IPO, nearly three times the amount it hoped for. On the first day of its trading, its stock price surged 76%. Before People’s Daily’s IPO, some pro-democracy activists said that…
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Internet PR Company Sued for Hiring Hackers
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Recently in the court of Shanghai Qingpu district, an “Internet public relations” company was found guilty of violating the article on Computer System Security in China’s Criminal Law. What this company did was to force a website to delete negative records of its client by hiring a hacker to attack the website.
“Internet PR” is a thriving…
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From Heaven Bank Note to iPhones, Popular Gifts to Your Ancestors on Spring Memorial Holiday
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Last week is the Spring Memorial Holiday (清明节）for Chinese, it is the time for people to go sweep the tombs of ancestors and loved ones, and pay them some tribute. We Chinese believe that you can send gifts to the dead by burning the gifts in front of their tombs. Popular tributes include fake money (from fake gold and…
Will Tim Cook Like Our Shanzhai (山寨) Phones?
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Apple CEO Tim Cook is visiting Beijing these days and meeting with Chinese officials. He even was spotted in the Apple Store in Beijing. But what my fellow netizens are curious about is how he likes our shanzhai（山寨) Phones.
I heard a story from a proud Shanzhai iPhone user: Tim Cook decided to try…
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Animal Protection also a Western Imperialist Conspiracy?!
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Gui Zhentang Pharmaceutical Company （归真堂）, a company that specializes in bear farming and extracting bile from live bears, is applying for IPO on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. The news was met with outrage all over social media in China. This company announced shocking plans to expand the number of bears they are torturing from 400…
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