Shanghai Scrap

Additional details and links available via a September 15 post to Shanghai Scrap.

[Update 9/19: It does, indeed, appear that the Vatican is going to take the pragmatic approach in regard to Beijing's new bishop. That is, make positive noises, but neither confirm nor deny the Pope's mandate. In that way, nobody is offended, and the diplomacy and relationship with Beijing can be deepened. According to a Reuters story reprinted in today's South China Morning Post [subscriber only]:

“This should be a favourable step forward, a good occasion to build on something,” a Vatican official said … “There is absolutely no bitterness … We are tranquil [about the appointment] and we are full of hope …

The Vatican regards the new state-backed bishop of Beijing in a positive light and hopes his appointment will help improve often-strained relations with the government, an official said yesterday.

[Update 9/18: AsiaNews cites unnamed sources that Fr. Li has, in fact, received approval from the Pope while noting that "other sources stated that they were not aware of that." I am inclined to believe the AsiaNews report for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that AsiaNews has some of the best and deepest sourcing on the China Church beat. And those sources have no good reason to mis-inform the publication. Also, there is little question that - out of respect for the sensitivities of the authorities in Beijing - the Vatican would like to keep a low-profile in this situation. To be sure, the Pope's June 30 letter requires Chinese bishops to make public their relationship with Rome; but, on the other hand, the Vatican has shown an unusual degree of pragmatism in its recent dealings with Beijing, and it wouldn't be surprising if that pragmatism is invoked in the case of this ordination. Father, soon-to-be-bishop Li is 42-years-old; there will be time enough for him to reveal his status in way that doesn't rankle the (still) important Beijing religious authorities.

But I think the most important evidence in regard to Li's relationship with the Vatican is the relative silence - compared to the three 2006 illicit ordinations. In those cases - and especially in advance of the Kuming and Wuhu ordinations - the Vatican made private and very public efforts to delay or halt the ordinations due to their illicit nature (these condemnations were covered in the media in advance of the ordinations). Notably, there has been no public condemnation of the upcoming ordination from the Vatican or its representatives; and that, to my mind, says quite a bit.]

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The September 13, 2006 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine has a very interesting and unsettling paper on the deleterious coronary health effects associated with physical exertion in polluted environments (I learned about the paper from an AP story which includes helpful analysis from outside experts). Specifically, the paper studies the health effects of exposing 20 men with “stable coronary disease,” all over the age of sixty, to diesel exhaust while they exercise. The results:

Brief exposure to dilute diesel exhaust increases myocardial ischemia [angina] and impairs endogenous fibrinolytic capacity [the ability to clear clots] in men with stable coronary heart disease. Our findings suggest mechanisms for the observation that exposure to combustion-derived air pollution is associated with adverse cardiovascular events, including acute myocardial infarction [heart attack].

Before I jump to conclusions – and I will – I think it’s fair and worthwhile to consider comments on the limits of the study made in an editorial accompanying the NEJM paper: (more…)

In February, on the verge of an important reporting trip, my laptop c: drive failed. Fortunately, I’d backed it up earlier in the day; unfortunately, Windows Vista had just been released and I’m a total sucker for new gadgetry. Faced with the choice of re-installing boring old XP or performing a new (!) install of mostly untested and totally bug-ridden Vista (or so I’d read) – I took the latter option. Alas, installing my Vista upgrade required that I re-install XP, first, and then install Vista over it – which sort of defeated the whole point … but I digress.

Despite horror stories from pretty much every corner of the computing universe, I’ve found Vista to be an absolute delight. The interface is clean and intuitive and – most important – I’ve found it to be far more stable and less crash-prone than XP. In fact, my only issue with the system was a brief but very real interlude during which the Vista seemed to be eating my (new) hard drive (this problem was not confined just to my system, either, as ably documented here). (more…)

[UPDATE 9/17: At 11: 51 AM, Beijing Time, Reuters confirmed that the ordination will take place on Friday. The story includes a comment from the Vice-chair of the Patriotic Association, and that's good enough for me to label the rumors confirmed. Publicly, at least, the question of whether or not Li received the Pope's approval is unresolved. How that revelation is handled will tell us much about the current state of relations between the Vatican and Beijing.]

[UPDATE 9/16: UCAN is also reporting this potential news. Their story is dated September 14, and includes many more details than mine, including the news that Fr. Li has received approval from the Chinese Catholic Bishop's Conference, and that the date of the 21st is "tentative" according to the diocesan Foreign Affairs office. As usual, very well-sourced reporting from UCAN, and worth reading.]

Several sources are indicating that Fr. Paul Li Shan, the 42-year-old priest elected to be Beijing’s new bishop, will be ordained on September 21. There has been no official announcement from the Beijing diocese or the Patriotic Association, but there are reports that priests have been called back to Beijing for a special event to be held on that date.

The timing, so soon after last week’s landmark ordination in Guiyang (with the blessing of the Pope and government authorities) suggests that the former was really a test-run for the latter. But why a test run?

Though I am speculating here, I think one reason was to test the public and media response to the ordination itself. There’s some history here. In 2005, foreign media reported that Joseph Xing’s ordination to be the auxiliary bishop of Shanghai had received the blessing of the Pope. In fact, the Papal blessing was the only reason that the foreign media bothered to cover the ordination at all. However, the overwhelming focus upon the Pope’s role in Xing’s ordination so irritated government officials that they actually began to deny the Papal role – despite the fact that they were quite aware of it. As one person close to the events said to me: “They really lost face with that one.”

So far, at least, there is no public acknowledgment as to whether or not Fr. Li has received the Pope’s blessing. Obviously, such a blessing is key to any Catholic ordination, but it is doubly important for this one because the Pope’s June 30 Letter to China’s Catholics explicitly demands that Chinese bishops make a public display of their relationship to Rome – if they have one. At the 2005 Shanghai ordination, Joseph Xing made no such acknowledgment during his ceremony – though news of the Pope’s blessing was widely disseminated before and after the ceremony. Li, in Beijing, is in a far more politically sensitive position than Xing (though Xing’s position was/is quite sensitive, indeed). In light of this, it would not surprise me at all if Li’s ordination proceeds much as Xing’s – without a public acknowledgment of the Pope’s approval during the ceremony. In fact, the few limited reports from Guiyang suggest that this was the state of things during last week’s ordination. The real question, then, is how and whether a public display of Li’s relationship to the Vatican will be announced. However it happens – and it must happen at some point – I this it will be accomplished in a far more low-key manner than the 2005 ordination in Shanghai, or even the relatively low-key ordination in Guiyang.

In May 2006, after several years of warming relations between the Vatican and Beijing, two Catholic bishops were illicitly ordained in Wuhu and Kunming. That is to say, they were ordained without the approval of the Pope, but with the approval of certain instruments of the Chinese government, including the Chinese Catholic Bishops Conference. Five months later, in November 2006, a third illicit ordination took place in Xuzhou. To a certain extent, there was nothing newsworthy in these ordinations: the first illicit Chinese ordination took place in 1958, and – barring the devastating impact and interruption of the Cultural Revolution – they had occurred regularly into the 1990s.

But, on the other hand, the 2006 illicit ordinations were crucially different because they revealed the breakdown of an informal agreement between the Vatican and China’s religious authorities whereby lists of episcopal candidate were vetted by the Vatican and Beijing before receicing the Pope’s apostolic mandate. In 2005 and 2006 several bishops were ordained after being selected with this method, and some of those ordinations – most famously, Joseph Xing’s in Shanghai – received considerable attention outside of China. (more…)

At 10 AM on Saturday five Shanghai districts will have their (relative) peace and quiet shattered by a fifteen minute air raid drill. The timing is no accident: the sirens will coincide with a rally in Kaohsiung to support Taiwan’s bid for UN membership. The rally and the UN membership drive are being pressed by Taiwan’s Chen Shui-Bian, never a favorite of the Mainland leadership. In fact, according to the Guardian, the last Shanghai air raid drill was held to coincide with his inauguration in May 2004 (I have no recollection of this event).

Still, I get the sense that this air raid drill is different, if because of recent remarks made by Li Weiyi, the spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office. Quoted today in the South China Morning Post [subscriber only] on the topic of Mr. Chen, Li said of him: “A scum of the nation who attempts to split the country won’t escape the punishment of history.”

No comment from Mr. Chen on what he thinks of Mr. Li. But his feelings toward Shanghai are, apparently, mixed. According to the Guardian, Shanghai is “the likely target of Taiwan missiles in the event of conflict.” This makes perfect sense, I suppose, though I must admit that it had never occurred to me quite so directly before (note to self: write detailed complaint to congressman).

As reported in Shanghai Daily, the drill will be held in Pudong, and the outlying districts of Jinshan, Nanhui, Fengxian, and Chongming Island. For whatever reason, Xuhui (my home district) and the rest of downtown will be spared sirens screaming across the sky in the midst of the tourist season.

There’s nothing that I enjoy more than a photo of a healthy and vigorous Chinese leader demonstrating – to the nation – that China is in the hands of a vigorous and healthy man (Russia’s Vladmir Putin recently set a new standard for this sort of photography). Which makes a snarky September 7 China Daily story on Guangdong’s apparently ailing cadres all the more interesting:

The report found hypertrophy (enlargement) of the prostate was a common complaint in men, while almost 20 percent of women had breast-related problems. Thirty-four percent of all those taking the test were found to have high blood pressure, while 27 percent had fatty liver diseases.

Certain cities, it seems, are more unhealthy for cadres than others. No surprise, decadent Zhuhai is at the top of the list:

In Zhuhai, about 600 officials were found to have heart problems, following their checkups. Many of them were found to have other problems, as well, such as being overweight.

I have no idea why Xinhua would run a story like this. Perhaps the message – not so subtly sent – is that Guangdong’s notoriously independent officials had better stop enjoying themselves so much (see: corruption, mistresses). And that does seem to be the message sent by Dongguan’s top party official, whose recipe for health is a sedentary home life (not unlike Ward Cleaver‘s) interrupted by occasional upper-body workouts:

Liu Zhigeng, the secretary of the CPC of the Dongguan Committee, who is in his 50s, managed to complete 28 push-ups in one go, and got a maximum score in the test. Liu said he only goes to social activities he must attend. At other times, he stays at home with his family, reading newspapers or watching television programs. “This is the way I keep myself healthy,” he said.

One of the standout works at the 2006 Shanghai Biennale was a pile of cheap Chinese export products that flowed from an open shipping container grafted to a wall in the Shanghai Art Museum. “Yiwu Investigation,” as designed by Liu Jianhua, reflected upon the unsteady relationship between the developed world and China. By choosing products from Yiwu, a thriving manufacturing center in Zhejiang Province, Liu suggested that the developing world’s consumer tastes had a mediating role in China’s emergence. According to an essay on the Biennale’s website:

“Although these commodities are known for their low design, usefulness, popularity, low cost and high added labor, they resonate with China’s connection to the world and symbolize the transitional position of Chinese society.”

On Thursday, Liu’s follow-up work, “Export – Cargo Transit,” opened at the Shanghai Gallery of Art. The new installation is also a meditation on the relationship between the developed world and China as expressed via trade. But the new work differs in that it focuses the developed world’s trade with China, and specifically shipments of hazardous “foreign rubbish” to Guangdong Province. Liu’s point is not subtle: today’s foreign scrap exports to China are the moral and economic equivalent of the 19th century opium trade. Or, as the printed materials distributed at the opening put it: “…past opium is today’s ‘foreign’ rubbish.” (more…)

In April I found myself standing outside of an operating room in Changsha, listening as two friends argued with a surgeon about the source of a blood transfusion for their mother. The surgeon had just emerged to announce that the surgery had gone well, but that there had been significant blood loss during it. As a result, he was ordering two pints of blood from the hospital’s blood bank.

My friends – two Hunanese of the marvelously temperamental variety – immediately and vigorously refused, instead offering themselves as substitute blood donors for their mother. Though unstated, the surgeon and other hospital staff understood all too well that my friends were suggesting that the hospital’s blood supply was unsafe. The ensuing argument ultimately had nothing to do with the patient, and everything to do with the hospital’s reputation. And, in the end, it was all moot: my friend’s mother didn’t need the blood, after all.

Later, in a less tense moment, one of my friends confided to me that there was no way that he was going to allow the hospital’s blood to be used on his mother. Quite clearly, I remember him saying: “I’ve heard stories about China’s blood.” (more…)

In his latest column for That’s Shanghai magazine, Kent Kedl – a good friend, and fellow Minnesotan in Shanghai – writes of the Minnesota State Fair. For Minnesotans in China, this is a real knee-slapper; for anyone else, well, Kent may have just solidified our reputation as some of Shanghai’s most, ah, inward looking of expats.

Still, there is one Minnesotan tradition that shares much with China: the Minnesota State Fair. Like China, Minnesota’s agricultural history has shaped much of our personality and practices, and the Minnesota State Fair is our harvest celebration. Think of it as the Mid-Autumn Festival for the beige-food crowd, or spending a day on the Nanjing pedestrian street, but with more livestock.

In any case, the State Fair can provide revelations of the same sort that Confucian masters experienced when observing life in China’s countryside. In short, it can show The Way. So in humble homage to the Analects, I here present 10 Life Lessons Learned at the Minnesota State Fair:

1. The word “craft” can be broadly interpreted: “Seed Art”, anyone? (more…)

By design, private equity and the companies that manage it are among the business world’s most secretive instruments and organizations. Which is probably one reason why the Blackstone Group – one of the world’s largest private equity firms – appealed to China’s newly formed State Investment Corporation [apparently, the fund's name has not been finalized], charged with obtaining higher returns from China’s US$1.2 trillion in foreign currency reserves.

In either case, in May the State Investment Corporation made its first major foreign investment by purchasing a US$3 billion piece of Blackstone’s US$7 billion IPO (roughly, 10% of the company’s equity). At the time, the Chinese didn’t have much to say about why they chose Blackstone, and Blackstone had only a little bit more to say about why they were willing to sell such a major stake to the Chinese. In a June 22 interview with CNBC, Blackstone CEO and co-founder Steven Schwarzman excused his company’s reticence by referring to the IPO:

You know, I am in the midst of working on an IPO and we have restrictions from our lawyers and the SEC in terms of what they call a “Quiet Period.” So I can’t talk about benefits to Blackstone, per se …

But Schwarzman is no stranger to Asia:

… what I’d say in a general sense is that having relationships in other parts of the world is always a good thing. And I think, given the way this particular country is organized, it certainly fits in that kind of rubric.

Fair enough, I suppose, but the question then becomes: Just what sort of relationship does Schwarzman get for accepting a US$3 billion investment in his company? With thanks to the webmaster at China’s State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission [SASAC], we now have an answer: (more…)

UCAN is reporting that the Guizhou Catholic diocese will celebrate the first ordination of a Chinese bishop since the Pope’s letter to China’s Catholics was released on June 30. Father Paul Xiao Zejiang was elected the co-adjutor bishop (with right of succession when the current bishop dies or retires) in October, and the election was approved by the government-organized Chinese Catholic Bishop’s Conference on August 28. It is worth noting that the Pope’s June letter declares that “… the present College of Catholic Bishops in China cannot be recognized as an Episcopal Conference by the Holy See …”

Nonetheless, the UCAN story notes that “Bishop-elect Xiao has received papal approval for his ordination …” (more…)

Earlier this year I established this blog with ideas for three – maybe, four – posts and a list of roughly six blogs that I hoped to recommend to others. Of those, the superb Danwei blog was at the top. Readers may have noticed danwei on my rather short blogroll; regular readers will almost certainly have seen Danwei references in my posts. I’m guessing that not a week has passed without at least one link to Danwei’s singular coverage of China’s media and blogsphere.

So let’s begin the week with a recommendation and link to Danwei’s Model Workers – an award given to web-based media (not just blogs) concerned with China (full disclosure: Shanghai Scrap made the list!). It’s a comprehensive list – there are some fifty sites on it – and I’ll be using it as my new guide as to what is interesting and overlooked in English-language Chinese media. Can’t be recommended highly enough.