A few weeks ago I had the chance to visit a very small village. The villagers there told me this story of how they converted to Christianity and I thought it was an interesting account that gave a glimpse of their relationship with God and a few of the practical challenges of being a rural Christian. The following is a fairly close retelling of what I overheard from their congregation-

To win a following among Chinese buyers, brands have to follow three rules. First and most important, products that are consumed in public, directly or indirectly, command huge price premiums relative to goods used in private...
The second rule is that the benefits of a product should be external, not internal...
The last rule for positioning a brand in China is that products must address the need to navigate the crosscurrents of ambition and regimentation, of standing out while fitting in.

China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) will reportedly further curb primetime entertainment programming, expanding the effective period of restrictions from 7:30-10:00 PM to 7:30 PM to 12:00 AM.

Ever wonder if you have the chops to slash content from the Chinese Internet before the government mandates it?
Well now you can answer the call.
Sina Corp., which runs the popular Twitter-like microblogging service Weibo, posted a notice on the service on Monday calling for candidates to apply for the job of “monitoring editor.” While the notice doesn’t explicitly mention censorship, it does emphasize “information safety,” common code in China for compliance with the wishes of propaganda authorities

2011 commentary on Yang Rui and his foul language//
作为记者，按说应该有懂当地语言的责任，否则怎么采访？但是，仅仅因为自己听不懂当地的语言，就骂给自己服务的司机“狗日的”，难道杨先生就是这样代表“大国”的吗？

China approves search giant's £7.9bn bid for MMI but says the Android OS must remain stay free for at least the next five years

如果不想错过这一波新的社交网络浪潮给所有产业带来的革命性巨变，你需要知道如何在这个庞大的社交平台上让你的品牌与全球消费者更深切的会面、互动。

The Chinese official was adamant the city of Weifang would keep its rayon factory open, noting that local authorities had just stepped in to help the plant's owner repay $60 million in commercial paper.
The bailout averted what would have been China's first ever bond default and was good news for domestic bond investors, who were reassured that in China even mid-sized state-owned firms can count on "too-big-to-fail" treatment.

In the months ahead, party leaders will use every propaganda tool to dissipate the damage inflicted on leadership unity, party discipline and national “harmony” by the Bo debacle. They might divert criticism from Bo by depicting his allegedly murderous wife as China’s Lady Macbeth. But members of China’s New Class will still worry that the revelations about elite corruption have exposed them to the danger of the Bolsheviks coming back.

Roderick MacFarquhar, a professor of government at Harvard, is a co-author of “Mao’s Last Revolution.”

It is impossible that Taiwan will cooperate with China on issues related to the disputed South China Sea region, an official told lawmakers Monday.

"We will not cooperate with China on such issues at present," National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai De-sheng said about the possibility of a Taiwan-China collaboration to address growing tension in the region.

Monday, Bloomberg reports that the dollar rush may be being magnified by the fact that Chinese citizens are also gathering dollar-denominated deposits at their fastest pace in five years

Thirty of China's biggest state-owned businesses have signed contracts worth about 350 billion yuan ($55.3 billion) with the southwestern municipality Chongqing

Beijing authorities called a halt to production of Ruihua, one of Beijinger's favorite Popsicle producers, during the weekend after media revealed a quality scandal of its products, which contain an excessively large amount of bacteria.

Ruihua Old Popsicle, which sells around 50,000 units per day for 1 yuan each, mostly in tourist sites, contains bacteria 1,767 times higher than that stipulated in the national standards for cold beverages, according to the Beijing News. The newspaper sent samples to a test center in Beijing, and found the batch, produced on April 1, to be extremely unhealthy. It was merely a mixture of water and additives.

Chinese traders have defaulted on some thermal coal contracts following a drop in prices over the past month, traders said on Monday, providing more evidence that a slowdown in the world's second-largest economy is hitting the appetite for commodities.

The coal defaults also come after sources at steel mills and traders said last week that some iron ore shipments had been postponed.

The three men — two of them powerful businessmen and the other a former intelligence agent — had befriended Mr. Bo and Mr. Wang years ago. They knew both to be controlling and impulsive, and their goal was to broker a peace.
The most famous of the three, Xu Ming, 41, listed by Forbes as China’s eighth-richest person in 2005, had flown in on his private jet. He and the others held separate meetings with Mr. Bo and Mr. Wang. The damage was irreparable. The former intelligence agent, Yu Junshi, rushed home and stuffed a bag with 1.2 million renminbi, or nearly $200,000, to take to a bank with Ma Biao, the other businessman, known for his girth. Then all three fled to Australia within days, fearful of the fallout from a possible investigation of Mr. Bo.
Those figures are now being detained as central suspects or witnesses in the Chinese government’s broad investigation into Mr. Bo’s use of power

The Wanda Group, a Chinese conglomerate with extensive interests in the entertainment business, has agreed to acquire AMC Entertainment, North America’s second-largest movie theater owner, in a deal that is valued at $2.6 billion, including roughly $2 billion in assumed debt, the companies said Sunday.

a win for the very smart "crocodile of the yangtze"//
The first step is the repurchase by Alibaba of up to one-half of Yahoo!'s stake, or approximately 20% of Alibaba's fully-diluted shares. The purchase price will be based on a valuation of Alibaba to be established through equity financings that Alibaba intends to undertake to finance the transaction, subject to a floor valuation of approximately US$35 billion..
The agreement also establishes a framework for Yahoo! to monetize its remaining interest in Alibaba in stages. First, at the time of an initial public offering (IPO) of Alibaba in the future, Alibaba will be required either to repurchase one-quarter of Yahoo!'s current stake at the IPO price or allow Yahoo! to sell those shares in the IPO. Second, following such an IPO, Yahoo! has registration rights and rights to marketing support from Alibaba to enable Yahoo! to dispose of its remaining shares, at times of Yahoo!'s choosing following a customary lock-up period...
the companies have also agreed to amend their existing technology and intellectual property licensing agreement. Among other things, this amendment will result in Yahoo! granting Alibaba a transitional license to continue to operate Yahoo! China under the Yahoo! brand for up to four years, while restrictions on Yahoo!'s ability to make other investments in China will be terminated. Alibaba will make an upfront lump sum royalty payment of US$550 million to Yahoo! and continuing royalty payments for up to four years. In addition, Alibaba will license certain patents to Yahoo!.

Young women shoppers in Beijing are "elegant;" their counterparts in Shanghai are "modern," while those from Guangdong province are "pragmatic," according to a survey released by leading Chinese online shopping site Taobao.

China remained the world's top consumer of instant noodles last year with more than 100 million packs of instant noodles being consumed every day, officials and industry experts said Sunday.

The U.S. move Thursday to slap harsh new tariffs on solar panels made in China is reckless as it runs against free trade which the world's most powerful nation says it promotes.

HARBIN, May 20 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor Liu Yandong on Sunday visited Zhang Lili, a middle school teacher in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province who was injured in an attempt to save some students.

Zhang, whose legs have had to be amputated after she was run over by the bus, has regained consciousness but must wait for the most opportune time to undergo further surgery.

Zhong Sheng ways in on page 3 pg People's Daily on cold war thinking and American's actions in regards to China

Richest man in northern Sha'anxi province under investigation, several officials dragged into the case. Who needs TV shows when you have the Sha'anxi/Shanxi Sopranos?

QQ News headline on He's speech: "Those with ulterior motives are using corruption to reject our country's political system"

Almost all of Page 2 of today's People's Daily is an excerpt from a report on clean governance and the struggle against corruptio given by He Guoqiang on April at the Central Party School, Led with a banner on Page 1.

Page 1 People's Daily coverage of Wen's comments on the economy

China will work to speed up approvals of qualified foreign institutional investors looking to buy into its domestic securities, as part of reforms aimed at adding depth to the country’s capital markets.
China’s foreign exchange regulator has approved $26 billion in QFII quotas for 138 qualified investors as of May 16, according to a statement posted on the State Administration of Foreign Exchange yesterday.

Taiwan's military development took a step forward on Friday when the country received 30 of its first Boeing AH-64D Block III Apache attack helicopters from the United States, reports our sister newspaper China Times.

China’s economic slowdown hasn’t diminished the importance of mainland clients to Sotheby’s, chief executive officer William Ruprecht said.
Chinese demand for jewelry, wine, watches and ceramics will continue to drive sales this year even as economic growth slows, according to the New York-based auction house.

Wang Lijun, the former Chongqing vice-mayor whose attempted defection to the US in February brought down Bo Xilai, may go to court next month

• Premier Wen Jiabao urged more efforts to maintain relatively fast economic growth.
•  "We should continue to implement a proactive fiscal policy and a prudent monetary policy," Wen said.
•  He said the central government will continue to strengthen and improve macro control efforts.

I would joke about this really happening when pigs fly but given what is in the animal feed here that may be more possible than we want to admit//
BIDS for railway contracts in China will open to local markets soon to ensure the transparency and fairness of the bidding process and prevent power-for-money deals, according to a document released yesterday.

As Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese legal activist who escaped from seven years of persecution, prepares for a new life after his arrival in the US, friends and relatives he left behind are bracing for a new round of abuse.

It’s mostly been over how they could get to the transaction they will be announcing later tonight (or morning in Hong Kong, which it is there now).
After many failed attempts to strike a tax-free deal — also involving Yahoo’s Japanese partner, SoftBank — collapsed, the pair settled on a taxable deal, which will net Yahoo upwards of $4 billion.

A temporary solution to the drama that unfolded this morning when Twitter was blocked in Pakistan — some believe over representations of the Prophet Mohammed and Twitter’s refusal to block these images; and some believe while it was testing an image filtering service. Whatever it was, the site is now back up –after an order from Prime Minister.

China’s Ministry of Culture has announced a month of celebrations to mark the 70th anniversary of Chairman Mao Zedong’s “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art.”
The “Yan’an Talks,” as they are known, are Mao’s seminal statement on the role of art in revolution; their influence on cultural policy remains powerful to this day.   Events to mark the anniversary will include a major exhibition of art from the Yan’an era at the National Art Museum of China; a May 23rd performance at the Great Hall of the People of the ballet version of an opera created at Yan’an, “The White-Haired Girl;” a series of “Arts Enter the Universities” events in multiple provinces and many other events.

is Yang Rui a xenophobe? Has CCTV picked a racist to head up one of the highest-profile  programs in its bid for international media relevance? The WSJ post translates one of Yang’s Weibo postings — the one that started the whole mess — but there is more to Yang’s outburst than that, and since I failed Mind Reading 101 in college and have not got access to the inside of Yang Rui’s head, it seems fairest to let him speak for himself via his Weibo updates, which I’ve translated below as fairly and directly as I can.

The negotiation room at the Foreign Ministry compound in East Beijing was set up with two long tables, each with a microphone. Elaborate Chinese art hung on the walls.

The Americans were greeted at 10 a.m. on Sunday, April 29, by familiar faces from the ministry — chief among them Cui Tiankai, a diplomat they had dealt with countless times. But on either side of the Chinese diplomats were two men who did not introduce themselves and were not introduced by others.

Not until days later, with an initial deal in sight, did the Americans learn that one of them was a representative of China’s Ministry of State Security — a powerful branch in charge of foreign intelligence and counterintelligence operations. The other, the Americans later surmised, was from an unidentified branch of China’s intelligence apparatus.

On the U.S. side were six State Department officials, including Assistant Secretary Kurt Campbell, who had been brought from Washington; legal adviser Harold Koh, who happened to be in the country for a conference; and the U.S. ambassador to China, Gary Locke.

The Chinese officials — 10 in all — conferred periodically in quiet huddles, but in a show of discipline, almost none uttered a word to the Americans over the course of four days. Only Cui talked.

News Editors - Dialogue
Dialogue is the flagship topical talk show on CCTV News, with lively studio debate focusing on international and domestic news, politics and current affairs.

and now the us embassy in beijing has a traffic accident problem.. a chauffeur claims his BMW was hit by a car w US embassy plates, will take a month to fix during which time he will lose most of his salary. The police say the driver of the car with diplomatic plates is at fault, the embassy told the chauffeur to sue them if he wanted compensation for lost wages

The screenshots show that the web page was subsequently updated to remove the following paragraph:

(5) Developments in the International Labor Movement Situation Are Creating New Challenges for SAC Mass Work at All Levels

Presently, there are new development trends in the international labor movement. Within the global scope labor-capital relations are complex and multi-faceted, the gap between rich and poor is growing, and every now and then there are major conflicts between labor and capital. Last year, there were repeated large scale strikes and marches in western countries. Greek labor organizations launched several large nation-wide strikes. The "November 30" strike in England was that nation's larges workers' movement in the last 32 years. The "Occupy Wall Street" movement spread quickly to sweep across America and had a deep influence. Western hostile forces are seizing this opportunity to take up the "rights defense" banner, and are scheming to incite China's working masses to manufacture disturbances, and have a negative impact on the task of developing the masses.

10k USD just to get a license plate in Shanghai//
In the monthly auction ending at noon on Saturday, the average bid for a plate was 64,367 yuan (more than 10,000 U.S. dollars), about 2,700 yuan higher than the April average, according to official data.

Chen Guangcheng, the blind legal advocate who made an improbable escape from virtual house arrest and sought refuge in the American Embassy here, arrived in Newark on Saturday, ending a fraught diplomatic drama that threatened to disrupt relations between China and the United States.

Amnesia toward the Cultural Revolution can complement and interact with efforts to address today's severe problems, raising stakes that the tragic history will be repeated.
But what frame of reference should China use during its ongoing transition? Should the country move forward by deepening reforms, while advancing political reform, which at its core involve restraints on institutional power, or to fall back to the era of slogans and campaigning?
Without democracy, the rule of law or constitutional governing, corruption will continue and social problems will become more acute, laying the groundwork for another Cultural Revolution.
The author is a research fellow at the China Academy of Social Sciences

Fault lines in the basic insurance system are appearing not only in disparities of coverage for those in the cities and countryside, but also in how health care institutions deal with the chronically ill

Mangos, or at least Pakistani ones, were sacred objects in China for a few years during the Cultural Revolution//
Several Philippine cargo ships with mangos expected to be sold to the Chinese were forced to dump their loads into the South China Sea after being denied break-bulk in China

Twenty people were killed in an explosion inside an under-construction expressway tunnel in central China's Hunan province Saturday

A Chinese woman was released from jail in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal Friday after serving a two-year sentence for having violated visa regulations, official sources said.

The Pentagon report is ridden with speculative descriptions and even distorts the reality.
 • As a champion of good-neighbor diplomacy, China has been aspiring for peaceful development.
 • This Pentagon move once again highlighted the U.S.'s lack of credit in dealing with China.

核心提示：“朱从玖是浙江方面主动向中央要的。”一位接近朱从玖的权威人士告诉记者，从组织考察到朱飞赴杭州，整个过程不到半个月。

核心提示：“不掩盖矛盾，不回避问题，不得过且过。”中共中央政治局委员、上海市委书记俞正声在18日的上海党大会大会报告上表示，今后五年上海还面临诸多困难和挑战，而上海的态度则如上表述。

Floating municipal officials in Hangzhou. Bad photoshop job

Northrop Grumman Information Systems sector is seeking a Cyber Software Engineer 2 to join our team of qualified, diverse individuals. This position will be located in Millersville, MD, Colorado Springs, CO, or Sacramento, CA. This exciting and fast paced Research and Development project will plan, execute, and assess an Offensive Cyberspace Operation (OCO) mission

New York Times doesn't believe the FT report that Zhou has been effectively removed//
Mr. Zhou joined President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao for a ceremony honoring police officials at the Great Hall of the People, a show of unity among the Chinese leaders, said a report by Xinhua, the state news agency. The event appeared aimed at quashing rumors and foreign news reports that there might be a split at the top of the Communist Party.

In the wake of Mr. Zhou’s western tour, Xinjiang Daily, a state-run newspaper, announced Saturday that Mr. Zhou had been “unanimously elected” to be a member of the Xinjiang delegation to the 18th Party Congress in the fall, when China’s new leaders will be announced.

wonder where China would be in this?//
The Obama administration is accelerating its planning with Middle Eastern allies for a series of potentially fast-moving crises in Syria in the coming months, including the possible loss of government control over some of the country’s scattered stocks of chemical weapons, U.S. and Middle Eastern security officials say.

The planning, involving intelligence and military officials from at least seven countries, includes detailed arrangements for securing chemical arms with special operations troops in the event that parts of Syria are seized by militants, the officials said. Western and regional intelligence officials are increasingly concerned that Islamic extremists could attempt to seize control of whole towns and districts if the country slides into full-scale civil war.

In a recent report debunking “myths” about China’s economy (which could have been titled “China:  Don’t Worry, Be Happy”), CLSA’s Andy Rothman maintains (in Myth #13, p. 46) that there a “no shadow banks” in China.  “Anything in the shadows sounds scary,” he says, but never fear because all of China’s financial institutions, banks and non-banks, are under the firm control of the Party.  “They are,” he quips, “Party animals.”

Indeed.  Zhongdan and other credit guarantee companies certainly seem to have been partying it up.  Only now is what they have done beginning to emerge from the shadows.  It looks pretty scary to me.

he Chens, accompanied by American officials, were brought onto the plane shortly before takeoff and seated in the business-class cabin. Flight attendants drew a curtain around their seats and barred other passengers in the cabin from using the toilet while the plane was on the runway...
The American Embassy bought the plane tickets but will reimbursed by New York University, said a source with knowledge of the arrangements. An embassy spokesman declined to comment on Saturday.

Lai Changxing, an illiterate peasant-turned-billionaire whose legacy of bribery, smuggling and monumental profligacy came to personify the excesses of the economic reform era, was given a life sentence on Friday for his role in what the government has described as modern China’s biggest corruption scandal, according to the state news media.

“This is about haves and have-nots,” said Hong Huang, the stepdaughter of Mao’s foreign minister Qiao Guanhua and a member of an earlier generation of American-educated princelings. “China’s old-boy network . . . is no different from America’s old-boy network,” said Hong, who went to Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and whose mother served as Mao’s English teacher.

“There is something about elitism that says if you are born in the right family, you have to go to the right school to perpetuate the glory of the family. Going to an elite college is a natural extension of that,” said Hong, now a Beijing-based style guru and publisher. Among her ventures is iLook, an edgy fashion and lifestyle magazine that offers tips on how to enjoy what a 2010 cover story proclaimed as China’s “Gilded Age.”

Noting that the Communist Party has drifted far from its early ideological moorings, Hong said she sees no contradiction between the desire for an Ivy League education and the current principles of the ruling party and its leaders: “What part of China is communist, and what part of Harvard is against elitist authoritarianism?”

J.V. “Jay” Vinyard, an 89-year-old former member of the “Flying Tigers,” and Nell Calloway, granddaughter of General Claire Chennault, who led the legendary air squadrons during World War II, are both laughing away. Sitting next to them on the sofa is an unlikely figure: The military-attired man, who is looking with amusement at a photograph, is General Liang Guanglie (梁光烈), minister of national defense for the People’s Republic of China...
Chennault would have found it absurd that one day, the Chennault Aviation and Military Museum in Louisiana, whose director, his granddaughter Calloway, would receive a check for US$50,000 on behalf of Huawei Technologies — a Chinese firm with suspected ties to the PLA — for its expansion. Or that the same company would underwrite a banquet last year for the museum’s expansion, complete with a lottery for a seven-day trip for two to China.

Yang Rui responds to @JamesFallows on Weibo weibo.com/1348026261/yjT… screenshot yfrog.com/kg2lwbaj

SASAC: Be on guard against hostile [foreign] forces who use rights preservation to incite the masses to create disturbance//
西方敌对势力趁机打着“维权”旗号，企图煽动我国职工群众制造事端，给开展群众工作带来消极影响

huge page 1 people's daily spread of hu jintao w PSB heroes, w wen, xi and zhou yongkang

During the 17th National Congress, Zhou was only a member of Politburo and minister of public security. Now that he is a member of the Politburo Standing Committee and the director of the Central Political and Legislative Committee, which oversees China's security forces and law enforcement institutions, it is reasonable to suspect that he may be nominated by other regions as a representative for the forthcoming comference. Many provinces have not yet announced their lists of delegates for the meeting so far.