MADRID — Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer on Friday decried the use of pirated software by Chinese businesses.
“One of the things that has improved a lot around the world is business piracy, and yet when we look at China today business piracy is more extreme than consumer piracy,” he told a business forum in Madrid. More
SHANGHAI — IT firm Foxconn faces renewed pressure over conditions at its factories after state media said Friday it had been accused of forcing staff in China to work excessive overtime while exploiting interns.
The results of a survey of employees at Foxconn come just months after a spate of suicides at the Taiwan company’s plants in China, including 10 at its Shenzhen facility which employs an estimated 400,000 workers.
Researchers questioned 1,736 workers at plants in nine cities and found they worked an average 83.2 hours overtime a month, more than twice the maximum 36 hours allowed under Chinese law, the China Business News said. More
FOR LIU XIAOBO, the Nobel Peace Prize awarded Friday will not be a get-out-of-jail-free card. Just ask Aung San Suu Kyi, the only other Nobel Peace Prize laureate in confinement. She was under house arrest when she won the prize in 1991 for her nonviolent leadership of Burma’s democracy movement, and she remains under house arrest today.
But the prize has enormous significance nonetheless. It should, first, inspire Western democracies to stand up to Chinese bullying, notwithstanding the growing economic power of the world’s most populous nation. Chinese officials warned Norway and the prize committee not to give the award to Mr. Liu, but the committee didn’t allow itself to be intimidated. More
The wife of Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo is being prevented from giving interviews to the media, her brother said in a statement on Friday, expressing his joy at news of the award.
“The police are at the home of Liu’s wife Liu Xia and are preventing her from giving interviews,” Liu Tong was quoted as saying in a statement released by the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.
Repeated calls by AFP to Liu Xia rang busy. About 20 minutes ahead of the announcement, she told AFP she had no news as to whether her husband would be honoured. More
OSLO — Jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, sparking a furious backlash from Beijing and renewed Western calls for his immediate release.
The 54-year-old writer and university professor was honoured “for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China,” Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said in his announcement.
“The Norwegian Nobel Committee has long believed that there is a close connection between human rights and peace,” he added. More
(Reuters) – Some Chinese cigarettes contain amounts of lead, arsenic and cadmium that are three times higher than levels found in Canadian cigarettes, a study has found.
While consuming such heavy metals is widely known to be harmful to health, there is little research done so far about their impact when inhaled into the body.
The researchers, who published their findings in the journal Tobacco Control on Thursday, said more investigation was needed. More
By Li Jingyi & Gao Zitan, Epoch Times Staff, Oct. 6, 2010-
An often overlooked group among the swelling ranks of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) least-wanted, and the nation’s most disenfranchised, are the parents of missing children.
Groups of parents take to the streets of Beijing with a long banner displaying photos of their missing children. On Sept. 29, The Epoch Times interviewed several of them. “Nowadays, there is only one child in every household. Losing a child is like the end of the world,” said one parent. “We show these photos in Beijing to raise awareness so this will not happen to other families.” More
U.S. legislators urged President Obama in a letter this week to press for the release of two Chinese dissidents when he meets with Chinese President Hu Jintao in November.
Obama and Hu will meet at the G20 summit scheduled for Nov. 11-12 in Seoul, South Korea.
The dissidents, Liu Xiaobo, a writer, and Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer, are described as “prisoners of conscience” in the Oct. 4 letter signed by a bipartisan group of 29 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and sent by the congressional Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. More
BEIJING — A four-storey residential building under construction in northern China collapsed, killing eight workers and injuring three others, state media reported on Sunday.
The nearly-completed building collapsed in the city of Xian early Saturday and more than 300 rescue personnel worked until 3 am Sunday (1900 GMT Saturday) to free survivors, Xinhua news agency reported. More
Authorities in Gansu Province have seized a paper mill and are moving to seize surrounding lands. In Zhenyuan County, 400 mill workers were driven out of their homes. Two workers were interviewed by SOH, one of them Mr Liu said the remaining residents were arming themselves with pesticide and gasoline to defend themselves against government officials.
The mill occupies 58,000 square metres of land. It was built over 40 years ago and has fixed assets worth tens of millions of Yuan and cash assets worth 13 million Yuan (AUD$2 million). The local authorities became interested in the property and took control of it. The mill was forced into bankruptcy by the authorities. The company name was changed to the ‘Jiahe Beer Packaging Factory of Qingyang’. The accounts and books were then prepared under the name of a separate company. Tens of millions of dollars of assets were then embezzled. More
In China, if you try to complain to the High Government about your local government being corrupt, etc… You can be kidnapped, put in to “black Jail” which is the illegal detention facility operated by police, and tortured so you learn your lesson.
Chinese government has never admitted that “Black Jails” exist, but here are two video footages.
Remarks presented during the Conference of the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) on Sept. 30, 2010 at the Palais des Nations, United Nations Complex in Geneva.
Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa) is a spiritual discipline which seeks to improve body, character and ethics. It contains features of traditional systems, like Buddhism and Daoism (Taoism), combined with a set of gentle exercises. Its core principles are “truth, compassion and forbearance”, which echo those of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other faiths. It today has practitioners in numerous countries.
In China, where it first became public in 1992, Falun Gong grew within seven years to 70-100 million practitioners by the government’s own estimate. Some Communist party leaders in early 1999 reacted negatively at seeing citizens from all walks of life, including party members, engaging publicly in a form of exercise, which had a belief system behind it different from Marxism-Leninism. The exercises, moreover, could be done anywhere at any time, singly or in groups, indoors or outdoors. The amorphous nature meant it was impossible for the party-state to control it.
The first vilification of Falun Gong by Party elements seeking to ban it in 1999 led to protests by practitioners, mobilized through cell phones and Internet coordination. A large protest at party headquarters in Beijing enraged then party-state leader Jiang Zemin. For him and others, banning and persecuting Falun Gong became official violence easier to get away with than doing the same to other spiritual communities because Falun Gong in China often lack Western connections. The incitement to hatred against them across China in Party media since mid-1999 has had many tragic consequences, most notably the widespread commercial trafficking in their vital organs. More
Li Changchun‘s visit to Ireland this week involved a first for the Chinese Communist Party: The Chinese delegation, led by Li Changchun (the Chinese regimes’ head of propaganda), managed to win funding from the Irish government toward a new building for the Confucius Institute in UCD, which the Chinese government will also partly fund.
The amount of funding is not disclosed. A special report in the international newspaper The Economist, published in 2009, which was investigating these institutes stated, “Mao vilified Confucius as a symbol of the backward conservatism of pre-communist China. Now the philosopher, who lived in the 6th century BC, has been recast as a promoter of peace and harmony: just the way President Hu Jintao wants to be seen. Li Changchun, a party boss, described the Confucius Institutes as ‘an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up’.” More
The growing organ transplant industry in China has attracted investments of foreign pharmaceutical companies, specializing in organ transplant drugs. But a representative from Amnesty International in Switzerland says these companies need to consider more than just business when engaging with China because of the illegal practices taking place there.
[Danièle Gosteli, Economy & Human Rights, Amnesty International, Swiss Action]:
“Of course if an international company knowingly participates and continues to do so even with the knowledge of organ trade, this would have a very bad effect on its reputation.” More
(Reuters) – Police in southern China have released on bail the author of a popular Internet novel they deemed pornographic, state media said, following an on-line uproar about official abuse of power.
Chinese language teacher Yuan Lei, 29, published “In Dongguan” on the popular portal tianya.com between August 2009 and February of this year, Xinhua news agency said late Thursday. The novel was about prostitution in bathhouses in Dongguan.
The booming manufacturing hub in Guangdong province, close to Hong Kong, has long had a reputation for its racy nightlife and anything-goes attitude. More
Courtesy of Wenn.com via Canoe.ca comes this list of celebrities who have been banned from certain countries and why. China leads the list door-slammers.
Brad Pitt was banned from China because of the actor’s starring role in “7 Years in Tibet” upset Chinese officials for a positive portrayal of the Dalai Lama.
Director Martin Scorsese was banned from China after directing the film “Kundun,” based on the teachings of the Dalai Lama.
Actor Harrison Ford was banned from China after testifying at the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in support of an independent Tibet.
Actor Richard Gere was banned from China. You guessed it. He is a devout Buddhist and supporter of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan independence.
Paris Hilton was banned from Japan two days after pleading guilty to cocaine possession. More
2. Large wave of resignation from the Chinese Communist Party is happening
More than 100 million Chinese have quit the CCP till Oct. 2011, people are continue quitting at a rate of 50,000 to 70,000 per day.
- The Tuidang Movement Milestone: 100 Million Chinese Hearts Changed
10.Videos: Tiananmen Square Massacre - June. 4, 1989
Thousands of students shot to death by tanks and soldiers on Tiananmen square in capital city Beijing in 1989
Reporters Without Borders said in it’s 2005 special report titled “Xinhua: the world’s biggest propaganda agency”, that “Xinhua remains the voice of the sole party”, “particularly during the SARS epidemic, Xinhua has for last few months been putting out news reports embarrassing to the government, but they are designed to fool the international community, since they are not published in Chinese.”
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