20th Anniversary Of Tiananmen Square Massacre June 4, 1989

The NYTimes has an extended feature on the "Tank Man" photos from June 4, 1989--including a never before published photograph of the unknown hero just before his encounter with the tanks near Tiananmen Square.

Here is the video:

---

Blog post from June 4, 2007--just after I returned from China:


A lone hero thwarts tanks deployed by the Chinese government, 1989.

Gateway Pundit has more photos and a roundup on the 18th anniversary.


A replica of the Goddess of Democracy statue erected in 1989 by protestors in Tiananmen Square and destroyed by the Chinese government June 4, 1989.

Standing Up To Tyranny--Unknown Rebel In Tiananmen Square

June 5, 1989

Muster the courage to fight for what you believe in--in the face of all opposition.

Massive Earthquake Strikes Southwest China

**Update--China quakeblogging roundup


Colin Jones photographed students sleeping outside due to fears of further quakes in Chongqing--CNN

Centered in Northwest Sichuan Province, and affecting Chengdu and Chongqing, China and surrounding regions.

Gateway Pundit has an early roundup.

More details are emerging as the death toll mounts--now believed to be above 9000.

I'll be keeping an eye out for further development. I have several friends and former students who live in the region, and am hoping to hear from them as soon as possible.

Chinablogging--(More) Toothpaste With Antifreeze, Contaminated Seafood, Censorship

Crikey--China product defect overload!

From the nice try department--China guarantees safety of products

Cool, minty death breath--More toothpaste with antifreeze suspected

Somethin' fishy--contaminated Chinese seafood detained

Battling Chinese censors--China's new citizen journalists

Chinablogging--China Overtakes US As World's Biggest CO2 Emitter

Al Gore arriving in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1:

China has overtaken the United States as the world's biggest producer of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, figures released today show.

The surprising announcement will increase anxiety about China's growing role in driving man-made global warming and will pile pressure onto world politicians to agree a new global agreement on climate change that includes the booming Chinese economy. China's emissions had not been expected to overtake those from the US, formerly the world's biggest polluter, for several years, although some reports predicted it could happen as early as next year.

But according to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, soaring demand for coal to generate electricity and a surge in cement production have helped to push China's recorded emissions for 2006 beyond those from the US already. It says China produced 6,200m tonnes of CO2 last year, compared with 5,800m tonnes from the US. Britain produced about 600m tonnes.

Jos Olivier, a senior scientist at the government agency who compiled the figures, said: "There will still be some uncertainty about the exact numbers, but this is the best and most up to date estimate available. China relies very heavily on coal and all of the recent trends show their emissions going up very quickly." China's emissions were 2% below those of the US in 2005. Per head of population, China's pollution remains relatively low - about a quarter of that in the US and half that of the UK.

And how are they achieving this astounding increase in CO2 output?

China is building two power plants per week. 1000s of cars are added every month to Beijing's streets alone.

But who is to blame?

Us.

Duh!:

It is estimated that the average American still pollutes between five and six times more than the average Chinese person.

Climate sceptics in the UK have been asking why Britons should switch off lights, turn down central heating and avoid foreign flights in order to save carbon when the Chinese are increasing emissions at their current a rate.

"Responsibility for China's soaring emissions lies not just in Beijing but also in Washington, Brussels and Tokyo," said Greenpeace UK director John Sauven said.

"All we've done is export a great slice of the West's carbon footprint to China, and today we see the result.

"Let us not forget that the average Chinese emits just 3.5 tonnes of CO2 per year, whereas Britons emit nearly 10 tonnes and Americans 20 tonnes.

"The West moved its manufacturing base to China knowing it was vastly more polluting than Japan, Europe or the US," he added.

"No environmental conditions were attached to this move, in fact the only thing manufacturers were interested in was the price of labour.

In The News--With Some Chinablogging

"I am both Muslim and Christian"--right, and I'm Santa Claus!

Separatist graduations proliferate at UCLA--disunity in diversity.

Chinese gold farmers--so that's why I couldn't get a seat in a Chinese internet café!

Hong Kong dissidents, autonomy, and China's mainland--murky ambiguity.

Chinablogging--Chinese Surname Crisis, Beijing Olympics

More than a billion people now sharing just 100 surnames!

China expects 4 billion Olympic viewers, 1 billion more than Athens

China overtaking US for fast internet access

China--the return of "authoritarian capitalism"

Chinablogging--Capital Punishment, Product Safety

In a reverse of recent headlines, China destroys U.S. products over safety concerns.

Reports that China has reduced the number of executions, while maintaining its position as the number one user of capital punishment.

Heavy rains, flooding kill dozens in China this past week.

China censors Flickr.

Chinablogging--Tiananmen Square Massacre June 4, 1989

A lone hero thwarts tanks deployed by the Chinese government, 1989.

Gateway Pundit has more photos and a roundup on the 18th anniversary.


A replica of the Goddess of Democracy statue erected in 1989 by protestors in Tiananmen Square and destroyed by the Chinese government June 4, 1989.

Chinablogging--Toothpaste With Antifreeze

Poisoned toothpaste from China discovered at U.S. discount outlets:

Consumers were advised yesterday to discard all toothpaste made in China after federal health officials said they found Chinese-made toothpaste containing a poison used in some antifreeze in three locations: Miami, the Port of Los Angeles and Puerto Rico.

Although there are no reports of anyone being harmed by the toothpaste, the Food and Drug Administration warned that the Chinese products had a “low but meaningful risk of toxicity and injury” to children and people with kidney or liver disease.

The United States is the seventh country to find tainted Chinese toothpaste within its borders in recent weeks.

Agency officials said they found toothpaste containing a small amount of diethylene glycol, a sweet, syrupy poison, at a Dollar Plus retail store in Miami, sold under the brand name ShiR Fresh Mint Fluoride Paste. The F.D.A. also identified nine other brands of Chinese toothpaste that contain diethylene glycol, some with concentrations of 3 percent to 4 percent.

Previously, only a few brands had been identified by health officials around the world as containing diethylene glycol and all of them listed the chemical on the label.

But diethylene glycol was not listed on the label of the toothpaste found in the Miami store. Its presence was detected only because the F.D.A. began testing imported Chinese toothpaste last month. That precaution was prompted by the discovery in Latin America of tens of thousands of tubes of tainted toothpaste made in China.

Having just returned from China, this story is certainly disconcerting.

Why? When I last visited China, I used Chinese toothpaste and bottled water to brush my teeth. Though I did not get sick then, my sense of unease with Chinese food products' safety, raised most recently with the pet food contamination of the last few months, has certainly increased.

The Chinese are in business to make money--and cutting corners for production of manufactured goods will result in poor performance or product failure resulting in injury or death. Inserting poisonous fillers to pet food and toothpaste to cut costs won't do much to improve China's aspiring position as producer to the world.

"Made in China"--the new phrase for caveat emptor (buyer beware!).

Back From China

Many thanks to The Daily Blogster and The Drunkablog for entertaining, informing, and keeping Slapstick Politics afloat in my absence.

Thanks to the Republican Princess for the many humorous YouTube videos.

Regular posting will resume tomorrow.

Slapstick Politics Goes To China

As a blogger "yearning for adventure and romance" and taking an international business class that focuses on China, yours truly will be intermittently posting from abroad (pending China's internet censorship rules) and will have, in my absence, an excellent cadre of guestbloggers here for the next few weeks (in no particular order):

Republican Princess--Slapstick Politics' blog fun captain

The Daily Blogster

Julian Dunraven--resident curmudgeon, legal analysis

The Drunkablog

Gonzoblogger--a view from the other side of the political fence, media analysis

Pics/video of China upon my return.

Chinablogging--Pagodas, Baby Boom

World's tallest pagoda, taller than the pyramids at Giza:

---

China sees a new baby boom:

China faces a looming baby boom as newly-rich couples find they can afford to pay fines incurred from having more than one child.

Upward pressure on the birthrate also is coming from millions of Chinese in their 20s and 30s who are allowed two children under the policy because they themselves were single children, Xinhua news agency quoted China's top family planning official as saying.

China adopted its one-child policy in 1979 to curb population growth. It encourages late marriages and late childbearing and limits most urban couples to one child and most rural couples to two.

The government claims the policy has led to 400 million fewer births in a nation of 1.3 billion people, but it is controversial. Many families want to keep having children until a male heir is born.

National Population and Family Planning Commission director Zhang Weiqing said the number of rich people having more than one child is rapidly rising, citing a recent survey by his organisation.

He also said early marriages are on the rise again in many rural parts of the country, Xinhua reported.

Separately, growing numbers of pregnant women are risking their own lives and those of their children by seeking back-alley deliveries to avoid fines for having more than one child, Xinhua quoted vice health minister Jiang Zuojun as saying.

Fines range from under 5,000 yuan (646 dollars) to 200,000 yuan (25,800 dollars) depending on the violator's location and income.

Xinhua said about half of maternal deaths in east China's Jiangxi province resulted from illegal pregnancies.

Better not tell the moonbats!

Chinablogging--Food Contamination, Panda Sex

If the China-based melamine pet food scare hasn't scared you (perhaps you don't own pets), then this news certainly might:

As American food safety regulators head to China to investigate how a chemical made from coal found its way into pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States, workers in this heavily polluted northern city openly admit that the substance is routinely added to animal feed as a fake protein.

The Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Company makes a chemical called melamine and sometimes sells melamine scrap to other producers who use it to make animal feed.

For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.

“Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed,” said Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company, which sells melamine. “I don’t know if there’s a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says ‘don’t do it,’ so everyone’s doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren’t they? If there’s no accident, there won’t be any regulation.”

Melamine is at the center of a recall of 60 million packages of pet food, after the chemical was found in wheat gluten linked this month to the deaths of at least 16 pets and the illness of possibly thousands of pets in the United States.

No one knows exactly how melamine (which is not believed to be particularly toxic) became so fatal in pet food, but its presence in any form of American food is illegal.

The link to China has set off concerns among critics of the Food and Drug Administration that ingredients in pet food as well as human food, which are increasingly coming from abroad, are not being adequately screened.

Just one of the pratfalls of international trade, as different countries' legal standards and business practices can create potential hazards, including food contamination.

The USDA and FDA issued the following statement:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continue their investigation of imported rice protein concentrate which has been found to contain melamine and melamine-related compounds. Based on information currently available, FDA and USDA believe the likelihood of illness after eating pork from swine fed the contaminated product would be very low. The agencies are taking certain actions out of an abundance of caution. As announced on April 26, swine known to have been fed adulterated (contaminated) product will not be approved to enter the food supply. (Because the animal feed in question was adulterated, USDA cannot rule out the possibility that food produced from animals fed this product could also be adulterated. USDA cannot approve potentially adulterated meat.) This update provides additional information regarding the ongoing investigation.
. . .
At this time, we have no evidence of harm to humans associated with the processed pork product, and therefore no recall of meat products processed from these animals is being issued. Testing and the joint investigation continue. If any evidence surfaces to indicate there is harm to humans, the appropriate action will be taken.

The assessment that, if there were to be harm to human health, it would be very low, is based on a number of factors, including the dilution of the contaminating melamine and melamine-related compounds from the original rice protein concentrate as it moves through the food system. First it is a partial ingredient in the pet food; second, it is only part of the total feed given to the hogs; third, it is not known to accumulate in the hogs and the hogs excrete melamine in their urine; fourth, even if present in pork, pork is only a small part of the average American diet. Neither FDA nor USDA has uncovered any evidence of harm to the swine from the contaminated feed. In addition to the dilutional factor and the lack of evidence of illnesses in the swine fed the waste pet food, we are not aware of any human illness that has occurred from exposure to melamine or its by-products. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention systems would have limited ability to detect subtle problems due to melamine and melamine-related compounds, no problems have been detected to date. To further evaluate any potential harm to humans, the FDA is developing and implementing further tests and risk assessments based on the toxicity of the compounds and how much of the compounds consumers could be expected to actually consume.

Happy eating!

If that doesn't cheer you up, try some panda porn!

The Middle Kingdom: Chinablogging

With an imminent trip to China just a few weeks away, it wouldn't be too bad to note some China-related headlines people may have missed:

Report: China Will Pass U.S. As Polluter:

China will pass the United States as the world's biggest source of greenhouse gasses this year, an official with the International Energy Agency was quoted as saying.

China had been forecast to surpass the U.S. in 2010, but its sizzling economic growth has pushed the date forward, the IEA's chief economist, Fatih Birol, was quoted as saying in an interview appearing in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal newspaper.

"In the past couple of months, economic growth and related coal consumption has grown at such an unexpected rate," Birol was quoted as saying. China's rising emissions will effectively cancel out attempts by other countries to reduce their own, he said.

Those comments follow the weekend release of a Chinese government report detailing the costs of climate change but asserting that the country should focus on development before cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Higher than average temperatures meant spreading deserts, worsening droughts, shrinking glaciers and increased spread of diseases, said the report, compiled by more than a dozen government bodies. It said emission limits were unfair and would constrain China's current energy and manufacturing industries.

China is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gasses, but is exempt from its restrictions because it is a developing country.

The Paris-based IEA advises developed country on energy policy.

China to use Marxism to clean-up Internet:

China's leaders are hoping that Karl Marx can shift the country's Internet users away from "decadent" content and help them clean up the Web, state media reported.

The Communist Party's Politburo this week asked media and cultural groups to promote and produce more "healthy online cultural products" including promotion of the ideology of Marxism, Xinhua news agency reported late Monday.

The government wants the Internet to "represent the social progress and the splendid traditional culture of China", the agency said, quoting a release from the meeting, which was led by President Hu Jintao.

The campaign's aim is to nurture a healthy online culture and prevent "decadent" material from spreading, Xinhua said.

China's Communist Party leaders, who enforce strict curbs on the press, have made no secret of the fact they regard the Internet as a threat and that it should be subjected to the same controls as traditional media.

In January, Hu called on the party to "purify" China's Internet community, which is rapidly growing as the country's economy expands.

The numbers going online jumped by almost 24 percent last year to reach 137 million, around one in ten Chinese, Xinhua quoted the China Internet Network Information Center as saying.

The country recently launched a crackdown on Internet pornography and last month capped the number of new cybercafes allowed to open this year, a measure state media said was aimed at stemming growing Internet addiction.

Chinese pirates beat Spider-Man to the punch:

China's infamous movie pirates have done it again -- "Spider-Man 3" is already being sold on Beijing's streets almost two weeks ahead of its U.S. premier.

Costing just over $1 apiece, the pirated DVDs appear to be of the actual movie, complete with a picture of the hero in a new, black spider suit which he wears for some of the film.

There is even a warning on the back, printed in Chinese, against pirating the product.

But put the one bought on Tuesday in the machine, and it does not work -- a common problem with Chinese-made DVDs, which are often made with poor equipment in dingy backrooms.

Early pirated copies of Hollywood blockbusters are sometimes filmed in cinemas and viewers can see people walking in front of the screen or hear members of the audience coughing. Other DVDs show totally different films to what may be advertised on the cover. China has been riled by U.S. complaints to the World Trade Organisation that it is not doing enough to tackle piracy, such as the billions lost each year by Hollywood to copyright pirates.

The government says it does take the problem seriously, but faces a multitude of problems such as convincing the man on the street not to buy fakes.

"It's too expensive to go to the cinema to watch movies," said Beijing resident Duan Nana. "This has a lot to do with why people are rushing to buy fake DVDs and watch movies at home. It's very common and it's logical."

China to Force Rain Ahead of Olympics:

Chance of showers during the 2008 Beijing Olympics: 50 percent. But Chinese meteorologists have a plan to bring sunshine.

The meteorologists say they can force rain in the days before the Olympics, through a process known as cloud-seeding, to clean the air and ensure clear skies. China has been tinkering with artificial rainmaking for decades, but whether it works is a matter of debate among scientists.

Weather patterns for the past 30 years indicate there is a 50 percent chance of rain for both the opening ceremony on Aug. 8, 2008 and the closing ceremony two weeks later, said Wang Yubin, an engineer with the Beijing Meteorological Bureau.

The forced rain could also help clean Beijing's polluted air, said Wang Jianjie, another meteorologist with the bureau.

"When conditions permit, we will artificially increase rainfall," she said. "Rainfall is a way to naturally clean the air."

In 2003, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences questioned the science behind cloud-seeding as "too weak." But China frequently uses artificial rainmaking in the drought-plagued north.

Last May, Beijing boasted having generated rainfall to clear the air and streets following the worst dust storm in a decade.

Technicians with the Beijing Weather Modification Office said they fired seven rocket shells containing 163 cigarette-size sticks of silver iodide over the city's skies. They claimed it provoked a chemical reaction in clouds that forced four-tenths of an inch of rain.

Beijing's air pollution is among Asia's worst. Officials have shuttered several chemical and steel plants on the city's edge, and many polluters will shut down _ or cut back _ during the Olympics. But the city also has 2.9 million registered vehicles, and the number is expected to reach 3.3 million by the Olympics, a 13 percent increase.