1. 一个自信的大国阔步走向世界–时政–人民网 very long P1 People’s Daily Thursday on a “confident great power striding forrth into the world” on Xi and the success of the G20  //  聚焦习近平主席的“G20时间”，追随中国特色大国外交壮丽篇章的徐徐铺展，世界感知着中国—— 感知着中国的道路自信。细读杭州峰会公报，和中国创新、协调、绿色、开放、共享的新发展理念高度契合。改革开放的伟大实践、中国发展的方法论启示，为破解世界难题提供了中国经验。 感知着中国的理论自信。“小智治事，大智治制”。中国方案综合施策、标本兼治，折射出中国发展符合而且引领世界经济潮流，中国正从全球治理的参与者变为引领者。感知着中国的制度自信。行胜于言，杭州峰会标注了G20发展史上的“丰收之年”。将共识转化为行动，将成果落到实处，中国引领前行，一再佐证“集中力量办大事”的制度优势。 感知着中国的文化自信。杭州城内绽放的文化元素，采撷于流淌了五千年没有断流的中华文明之河。全球治理凝聚更多共识，需要寻求文化的理解和认同。自信是一个大国的姿态

Related: PacNet #67 – Beijing’s baffling bullying | Center for Strategic and International Studies While these all likely influence Chinese diplomacy, a more worrying explanation is most compelling: decision-making in Beijing is becoming more consolidated at the highest levels of the leadership, and there are few ways and little inclination to challenge or change the course and momentum of foreign policy once it is set. As Xi amasses more power, the readiness of others to question decisions from above is reduced, especially given the potentially high cost of dissent. No one is prepared to be out of step with the leadership either in regard to policy in place or the vacuums that occur as developments arise. Today, a hard line is a safe line and absent a correction from on high — which some could take as a tacit admission of failure (which makes a reversal even harder) — the status quo prevails and intensifies.  //I would put some money on another hypothesis. The CCP decided, likely before Xi became General Secretary, that China’s rise, and specifically its inevitable and predestined reclamation of the South China Sea and other territory in the region that it claims, would cause tension no matter how the PRC handled things, so the decision was made, once there was confidence in relative comprehensive national power, to push forward sooner rather than later, before the surrounding countries and the US were fully prepared and willing to push back in any material way. The fact that those countries are now upset and possibly serious about checking PRC power only confirms the deeply held belief in China of its victimization at the hands of foreigners and specifically the belief that US is determined to contain China and keep it down. So rather than assuming that Xi is a foreign policy failure and has been weakened by what to many outsiders look to be missteps, perhaps we should consider that his position has strengthened and the world view speculated above has been further confirmed, at least in the hardline, jingoistic quarters that seem to have the most influence in Beijing these days….

Related: Pacific Shoals of Trouble – WSJ In a revealing speech this summer, senior Chinese academic and government adviser Jin Canrong predicted that China would build at Scarborough but not until 2018, after Mr. Xi has the chance to consolidate power at the next Communist Party Congress. “When we reclaim Scarborough Shoal it will be a dangerous time,” Mr. Jin said. “It will push forward the U.S.-China showdown by 30 years.” // text of his speech, with one of many key sections–中美战略哲学-20160723讲座-金灿荣 这是非常新的变化，原来美国人态度很潇洒，他认为你是未来的挑战，他不关心这个，现在发现中国真的要南海以后，他现在急的不得了，所以有了一系列表态，现在美国人真的警觉了，真的准备投入力量了。咱们现在也玩真的了，现在我们的少东家决心重整家业，他视察宁夏讲了一句话，中华民族的能量压抑的太久了，该爆发一下了。我觉得南海可能是一个爆发点，美国知道这个事情事关它的国运，美国从来没有形容过南海是他们的最高国家利益，这是第一次，他真的很严肃看这个问题，咱们国家现在决心也很大，我估计真正的南海危机是2018年，应该是我们主动进攻，我们会在那个时候填黄岩。但是从填黄岩那一天开始到我们完成，将是非常惊险的一段时间，全国人民都得做好准备，这是一个巨大的历史性的冒险。等于是把2050年的中美摊牌提前到了2020年，提前了30年。

Related: China has all but ended the charade of a peaceful rise | South China Morning Post Frank Ching says only in its own imagination can Beijing’s demand for dominance in the region be seen as friendly

Related: International diplomatic incidents bring benefits for China — FT.com China has been preparing for the G20 for more than two years and event planning is a forte of the Communist party; so why, as US officials claim, did the Chinese side change the arrangements for Mr Obama just before he arrived? The domestic propaganda benefits that accrue from putting the arrogant superpower in its place are impossible to ignore. As the 18th-century Chinese emperor Qianlong once said of the pesky British: “A barbarian becomes arrogant when treated too favourably.” Any western diplomat with recent dealings with China will tell you that negotiations and joint events often feel like exercises in ritual humiliation. Even the Queen expressed frustration at how “very rude” Chinese officials were during President Xi Jinping’s visit to the UK in October.

Related: Hillary Clinton: The China hawk — FT.com So how would President Clinton act in Asia? For all her input in defining the Obama administration’s strategy to the region, during the election campaign she has turned against one of its central planks, the 12-nation trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership…Among Mrs Clinton’s Asia advisers, the approach being debated is a slightly stepped-up version of the Obama pivot — a series of steps aimed at forging a deeper network of allies and partners that can act as a deterrent to China and reinforce US ideas about trade and freedom of navigation.

2. Sam Dastyari: Riding the red dragon express not a good look-Sydney Morning Herald serious backlash underway in Australia against PRC influence // Total disclosed payments to the major parties by Chinese corporate and business interests in the two years to June 30 last year was $5.89 million. An informed official tells me: “There is very high level concern inside ASIO about the use of donations to purchase access and influence. “It’s concern about systematic behaviour by people connected to the Chinese state apparatus. It’s centrally directed by Chinese intelligence.” // And now he has stepped down–Sam Dastyari steps down from Labor frontbench after accepting money from Chinese donors – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Related: China’s local emperor Huang Xiangmo says politics just like sport | afr.com He’s paid Senator Sam Dastyari’s legal bills, hired former NSW deputy premier Andrew Stoner and former treasurer Eric Roozendaal, he’s the head of the oddly-named “Australia Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China” and been dubbed the “king of the mountain” after several wealthy Chinese bought around him after he spent $12.5 million on a lavish mansion in Mosman.  Now, in an exclusive first English-language interview, the man who is arguably the reigning emperor of the Chinese community in Australia, Huang Xiangmo, wants to shed his enigmatic image.

Related: Security services worry Malcolm Turnbull isn’t heeding China warnings | afr.com Despite vetoing a Chinese bid for Sydney’s electricity network this month, Mr Turnbull and some other cabinet ministers are reluctant to act on or receive warnings that China is engaging in spying on an “industrial scale” and that business secrets are among its top targets, three sources with senior contacts in the security services said. “It is far more ambitious and better resourced than ever before,” said Paul Monk, an intelligence and foreign affairs expert who headed China analysis for the Defence Intelligence Agency.

Related: Incident at University Pharmacy Highlights a Divided Chinese Community Shortly after the pharmacy began stocking the Epoch Times, a male Chinese student appeared at the counter, enraged by the presence of the newspaper. According to the pharmacy, he yelled, ‘who authorised you to distribute this?’ and ‘You can’t show this!’ while customers looked on in confusion. The student said that he had received numerous complaints from Chinese students about the newspaper, and identified himself as being from a Chinese student association. As the student was aggressive in his body language and the shop was busy, the pharmacist on duty at the time said that she felt intimidated, and allowed him to throw out the newspapers. ‘I was concerned about the how this might affect our business,’ the pharmacist said, explaining the pharmacy’s immediate action to cease stocking the newspaper. The pharmacist provisionally identified the student as Tao Pinru, President of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA).

3. Records Smashed in New Real Estate Rush-Caixin A China National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report said home sales in monetary terms rose 42 percent between January and July compared with the same period in 2015. NBS also said most big and medium-sized cities saw new-home prices rise every month this year through July. Meanwhile, rival property developers are driving urban land prices higher by competing at city government land auctions. New price records have been set across the country, according to media reports. For example, a plot in Shanghai recently sold for 11 billion yuan ($1.6 billion), about 100,000 yuan per square meter, a historic high.

Related: Shanghai Censors WeChat ‘Rumors’ on New Property Curbs-Caixin nternet regulators in Shanghai have taken down several social media accounts that offered property market news and ordered a dozen others to stop publishing updates as it cracks down on alleged “rumors” on impending restrictions on home purchases.

Related: Shenzhen Couples Use Divorce to Skirt Home-Buying Rules-Caixin About 45 percent of homes sold in Shenzhen last year were bought by people who had avoided curbs on home purchases by filing for divorce, according to a study by the Shenzhen branch of China Banking Regulatory Commission. Investigations found homebuyers often use sham divorces and falsified pension and medical insurance plans to make them appear eligible to purchase a new home, a person with knowledge of the study told Caixin. // they did it in Beijing starting years ago, now doing it in Shanghai as well 

4. Rhodium Group » Preventing Deglobalization On September 1, the US Chamber of Commerce released Preventing Deglobalization: An Economic and Security Argument for Free Trade and Investment in ICT, a study produced jointly in collaboration with Rhodium Group and law firm Covington & Burling. The report explores the economic, legal, and policy implications of reversing trends in globalization, particularly in information and communication technologies. As countries debate the merits of ICT nativization, Rhodium’s task was to examine the cost and welfare impact of such policies. This note summarizes Rhodium’s economic analysis, which uses economic modeling to estimate the impact of Chinese ICT deglobalization on its GDP and productivity.

Related: Outline of the National Informatization Development Strategy « China Copyright and Media Central Committee General Office State Council General Office 27 July 2016 // don’t think foreign pressure going to do much to slow ICT “deglobalization”, security services, other bureaucracies and Chinese IT forms have too much at stake now in keeping it moving forward

5. Innovation, so the Party can shine – China Media Project Not only has General Secretary Xi Jinping, using the strongest language in decades, re-staked the CCP’s longstanding claim to media control — saying all media, from traditional newspapers to mobile platforms, “must be surnamed Party.” He has also moved aggressively against influential Weibo users, effectively muzzled the more outspoken commercial press, and placed himself at the helm of a powerful new Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs. These days, it is the Party bureaucrat, as much or more than the netizen, who can look at the changes convulsing the world of media and information and see a world of infinite possibilities. As the media landscape is being reshaped globally, China’s leaders glimpse an opportunity to climb back to the top of the hill. The Chinese Communist Party, they say, can lead the innovation charge, ensuring the brave new world of new media defends and energises its own dominant position.

Related: Convergent Control – China Media Project At a meeting in Beijing last week, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the country’s umbrella agency for internet regulation and control and related security matters, called together more than 60 representatives from state-run websites and commercial internet portals to hammer home, yet again, a tough message on information controls. According to Hong Kong media reports, the CAC told those present that from this point forward a system of “editor-in-chief responsibility” (总编辑责任制) would be in force at priority websites, meaning authorities would hold senior staff directly responsible for news stories and other content that violated censorship guidelines. Strengthened internal discipline, the CAC said, must be practiced on a “24/7” basis (7×24小时值), leaving no gaps for editorial breaches.

6. Global Times editor Hu Xijin discusses US-China relations, press freedom in China, and the June 4 protests — Quartz Hu recently sat down with Quartz at the Global Times’ Beijing office to talk about his little-known past, the love-hate relationship between China and the US, and how the state news outlet fits into Beijing’s global propaganda efforts. A lightly edited transcript follows.

7. The Hong Kong Election: What Message Does it Send Beijing? | ChinaFile On September 4, Hong Kong elected a batch of its youngest and most pro-democratic lawmakers yet. Six new legislators, all under 40, won on platforms that called for Hong Kongers to decide their own fate. The youngest is 23-year-old Nathan Law, a veteran of the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests and a co-founder of the new political party Demosistō. What message does the election of these young legislators send to Beijing, and how will China’s leaders react?

8. Constitutional Hostility – China Media Project Out of curiosity, however, I decided to reach back into the past to uncover the last time the “hostile forces” language of China’s constitution had been actively deployed in China’s media as an argument against dissident views or activity. Peeling back the layers, year after year, through both the Baidu and Google search engines, I could find nothing — no reference whatsoever outside of full-text offerings of the constitution itself. I turned to the People’s Daily, back beyond the Beijing Olympics, beyond SARS and the Sun Zhigang affair, through the era of Jiang Zemin, past Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour, that watershed event that accelerated economic development in China…The day was June 14, 1989.

You can read the rest of today’s newsletter here.

The post The Sinocism China Newsletter – September 7, 2016 appeared first on The Nanfang.

Following the “sharp drop” in the number of group tourists from China, the government is scrambling for a tourism policy. Proposals are aimed at Muslim and SE Asian tourism.

Meanwhile the Tsai Administration is inundated with protests and strikes. Saturday public sector employees went out to protest pension reforms. Taipower employees are also marching to Taipei because of changes in Taipower. The DPP wants to create additional electricity organizations to carry out Taipower’s current role. One of the most hidebound and conservative agencies in the government, it is a testimony to the power of the bureaucracy that reform can only be accomplished by keeping agencies in place but reducing their power by creating new agencies. *sigh* Tourism groups were also out in a small protest to complain about the drop in group tours. What do all these have in common? They are deeply Blue groups. Some of the more suspicious Greens are seeing coordination in the strikes….

Frozen Garlic emerged from his cave to write to the Greens to stop acting as if the sky is falling because Tsai’s popularity has declined a bit. We have a pro-Taiwan legislature and a pro-Taiwan Administration, something to celebrate. Moreover, DPP party ID is continuing to rise. The long-term news is good. So relax guys….

Good and bad news out of the KMT… first, the party is grudgingly adopting measuresto permit the local chapters to elect their own leaders.

Under the amendment to Article 26 of the charter, local branches will be able to elect their own directors, though the party leadership will retain the authority to appoint deputy directors and to ratify local appraisal committee members.

The KMT now has two months to form a committee to implement the changes that were outlined in the local branch amendment.

In line with the amendment, the party could hold combined elections in August next year for its chairperson, local directors and party representatives, which would be a first since the KMT’s founding more than 100 years ago.

At first you think — yeah, progress toward Taiwanization. But elites objected to this, since they may lose control of the local branches, and the language of the changes shows obvious intent to keep elected local directors under central party eyes. PTS reports on other changes at the Congress. Apparently the KMT is now incorporating a cross-strait peace agreement into its party charter. The Taipei Times gave an expanded version of the changes, which also involve including the 1992 in the Charter but leaving out the codocil of one China, “each with is own interpretation”, though several party bigwigs objected. The key point, of course, is that none of these have any great appeal for the voting public.

BTW, my man Donovan the ICRT Central Taiwan news guy notes that…

We’re still on track for Taichung to be the second largest city by mid 2017:
Countdown to Taichung passing Kaohsiung as #2: 20,182 (end Aug data, Aug -1847, Jul -1872, Jun -1470, May -2414)

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For those who follow public debate in China, you are aware how important an official endorsement of a political position is: it indicates that the government has decided on a particular course. The announcement indicates an ideological orientation, rather than specific actions, allowing new kinds of interventions to take place. The vagueness of the announcement means that suddenly “interpretation” becomes the site of negotiating what should happen next. So, this announcement is not a fix-it; we won’t even know its effects until we see how variously positioned stakeholders “interpret” the new attitude.

Of particular relevance: does this mean that the redevelopment of Baishizhou can be reconsidered, even as demolition of the western industrial park has begun? Will the Tangtou row houses qualify as “historical” and “cultural”? These questions are pressing because labeling urban villages as “low cost housing” overlooks the extent to which they are also productive and creative spaces. However. Today, I’m happy because the article quite clearly states that the organized resistance to the demolition of Hubei Old Village influenced planning decisions taken during this year’s Municipal Plenary. Suddenly a small space has opened up for third parties to talk about alternatives to demolition and forced evictions in Shenzhen urban planning.

The article was published by Shenzhen’s Commercial Press (商报).

Thumbs Up for the New Regulations on Old Village Redevelopment

Commentator Miao Fansui

Thumbs up for several of the government’s new urban planning regulations, even if some seem old fashioned and ordinary. However, recently the urban planning commission website published “Draft of the Shenzhen Redevelopment ’13th Fifth’ Plan,” and the section on “urban village redevelopment new guidelines” not only has us feeling their insight into the city, but also their warmth for it.

With respect to those urban villages with historical and cultural relevance, “In principle, comprehensive improvement will repair ancestral halls, temples and other buildings of cultural historical value, emphasizing the heritage and continuity of historical context, under the protection of the premise, the development of cultural industry and tourism industry.”

Which urban villages are encouraged to demolish and redevelop? “It is encouraged to demolish and redevelop outer district urban villages that have old architecture and hidden dangers.”

Ten years ago, Shenzhen faced the “four things that are difficult to continue,” including continued access to land and space. In the Municipal Plenary that just finished, the session pointed out the of the “three challenges” to development in Shenzhen, the most pressing is the lack of space. Redevelopment of urban villages was once seen as a means to solve this problem. The new plan for the transformation of urban villages shows  restraint, and this  choice can be seen as making the difficult decision between different value orientations.

Since 2005, when Shenzhen redeveloped Fishing Village (渔民村), old style total demolition of urban villages has been controversial, and this newspaper has published more than one review to express different views on how transformation should take place. Urban villages have “urban wetlands” function. Their existence is in relation to operating costs of the entire city. The more developed a city is, the more you want in the city center to have low-cost living areas, to provide security, couriers, cleaners, restaurants attendants and other low-income people a place to live. In principle, in planning urban villages located within the area of the original special economic zone [the inner districts] will not be demolished and redeveloped, and the shrinking of Shenzhen’s “urban wetlands” will be halted. Such decisions, including the depth of insight of urban development is visionary.

At the same time, through the comprehensive improvement of villages, local transformation will be more in line with the actual development of Shenzhen. In 2009, this newspaper published debates about the lack of public rental housing in Shenzhen, urging the Government to change its thinking, and come up with material and financial resources to improve urban villages to meet public rental standards and allow the villages assume direct responsibility for public rental housing. We see that in the proposed plan, Futian District has clearly pointed out that we need to explore urban villages and renovation in order to create more affordable housing for young talents. Measures such as these have meaningful value to be discovered and to create upgrades.

With respect to the historical and cultural characteristics of ancient villages, under the premise of protection, development will be with respect to the cultural and tourist industries. Obviously, this kind of policy is not unrelated to the Hubei Old Village Incident that happened over a month ago. No matter what the prospects for Hubei Old Village are, in the future, similar villages will have to be renovated in new ways.

Shenzhen’s urban villages are valuable assets, and this value cannot be determined by the value of demolition and redevelopment. When our government revealed the “13th Five-year” plan it showed a far-sighted and warm public police that will benefit the people in urban villages, which in turn will allow the urban villages to continue to provide even greater feedback to the city.

Here’s a link to the original editorial, 为城中村旧改新规点个赞. The article in Chinese follows the slideshow of a recent walk in Baishizhou, including a shot of the beginning of demolition of Shahe’s industrial park, shops that were holding “demolition sales,” the rapidly aging Tangtou row houses, and the wall between Baishizhou and OCT, as well as a picture of the Fulin School, which once long ago illegally educated migrant children who had come to the Special Economic Zone with their parents.

The post Shenzhen’s New Attitude Toward Urban Villages appeared first on The Nanfang.

Rather than being devoid of noteworthy characteristics, Ho has them in abundance – ranging from odiousness to sliminess to creepiness to endorsement by the Liaison Office. After some variant of Beijing-linked lowlife saw off rival candidate Ken Chow through unspecified menaces, Ho narrowly won a seat with a lame 35,600 votes. The RTHK interview presented a good opportunity to be at least slightly modest for a moment. But instead he decided to gloat about land activist (and brave critic of Ho’s village mafia buddies) Eddie Chu, who won a resounding 84,100 votes. Smirking so much it was obvious even over the radio, Ho mocked that he would not have won his seat if the pan-dems had organized their supporters more effectively and not ‘wasted’ surplus votes on Chu. Priscilla Leung never seemed so charming and huggable.

The big question is: What will Beijing do now? The answer probably lies in the nastiness and arrogance displayed by Junius Ho upon getting far fewer votes than the pan-dems, and even then only with assistance from various gruesome quarters. He is the personification of the Communist Party’s United Front tactics: the exercise of control over Hong Kong through the co-option of grubby interest groups who leech off the rest of the economy and population. It is an extraordinarily inefficient and difficult method of gaining influence over a community – to buy support from unpopular parasitical groups, rather than simply win the approval of the masses through decent governance – but it seems this is the only way Communists know.

Willy Lam foresees malevolent, vindictive clampdown, including another attempt at Article 23 national security laws. This sounds about right. Ramping up the force and obnoxiousness and threats is, again, the only solution to opposition Communists can envisage. In Xinjiang, Chinese officials are trying to force Muslims to do tai chi in the parks every morning, to make them more normal and happy. Lam predicts similarly subtle demographic and economic absorption for Hong Kong, perhaps through more Mainland immigration and more eradication of economic diversity in favour of Mainland-oriented tourism/shopping/hellishness, to force the uppity and ungrateful city to become more dependent on the glorious motherland, thus servile and pitifully grateful and adoring.

Actually, we should reframe the question: What will Beijing do if/after the courts order new elections in which formerly screened-out pro-independence candidates can run? The answer is, presumably, ‘all of the above, plus extra mouth-frothing and extreme going-ballistic’.An interesting departure-combo today: anti-Communist/abortion/women’s rights womanPhyllis Schlafly and counterculture publisher/journo/author Richard Neville. It would be fascinating to eavesdrop on them sharing memories of the late 60s-early 70s as they stand in line at the big reception desk in the sky.

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When the Japanese took over Taiwan in 1895, opium smoking was legal and widespread. In fact, according to their stats, opium imports accounted for 45-75% of Taiwan’s imports by value between 1864 and 1895.

Opium consumption was strictly illegal in Japan, but the new administration in Formosa balked at such a policy for the island, especially given the large number of smokers. Goto Shimpei, then director of the Health Administration Bureau of Japan (later head of Civil Administration Bureau in Taiwan beginning in 1898), warned that a ban with a death sentence as existed in Japan would have to be imposed by force, with the concomitant violence and loss of life among Japanese soldiery. Goto instead argued for gradual reduction over decades.

According to Liu et al, based on this policy, in 1897 the government established an Opium Monopoly Bureau, which legalized opium for medicinal use (similar policies were followed in Burma by the British and Java by the Dutch). Wholesale and retailer marketers of opium needed a government license to sell opium. Users had to get a diagnosis of addiction from a doctor and then a license from the government to purchase opium for their own use. Unlicensed use was severely punished.

In 1900 the government reckoned the number of users at 169,064, or 6.3% of the population. Addicts were granted licenses again in 1903 and 1908. After that no more licenses were issued. This fascinating book on opium production and revenues notes that after the Japanese figures came out in the early 1900s, the Qing gov’t used them to revise its estimates of its population’s own opium consumption.

To reduce consumption, opium prices were set high. In 1900 19.1% of the colonial budget came from opium revenues, but by 1944 that had fallen to just 0.14%. Goto had recommended that revenues from opium sales be used only for suppressing opium, and not for other administrative uses. Thus most of the funds went to public hygiene and health activities, along with some for education.

As is well known, the policy was a success. Opium imports plummeted from nearly 200,000 kilos in 1900 to just 7.940 in 1942. The Japanese model was widely discussed and studied among countries administering Chinese populations in their colonies.

However, this policy should not be viewed in isolation — it was part of a larger imperial policy of exploiting drug use for profit and power. While opium consumption was suppressed in Japan and Formosa, Japanese merchants shipped it to China for large profits. This old text notes that Formosan shopkeepers naturalized as Japanese citizens (and therefore untouchable by Chinese police) ran a thriving trade in it. According to that book in Tsingtao (which Japan occupied following Germany after WWI) the Japanese brought in opium from Formosa and elsewhere and sold it through Chinese merchants allied to the Japanese administration (across Shantung), and used the police to suppress rival opium sellers, a program described in detail inMoral Nation. They also shipped opium by train protected by Japanese troops, a policy we have seen with cocaine and other drugs, as US forces discovered in Japanese records seized after WWII. In Kwangtung Japanese corporations sold opium from Persia, and apparently opium was sold illicitly with the connivance of Japanese authorities there. The Japanese had problems with opium use only among their own people…

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It’s not just Uyghur food, though. Whether you want to eat Hui food, Kazakh food or Chinese food – Xinjiang has it all. Unfortunately, not everybody knows what to eat…or even how to order it! That’s where you’ll find this guide and video useful.It doesn’t matter if you eat in a restaurant, on the street or at a local Xinjiang bazaar, you’re likely to run into the same types of foods wherever you go.

The following recommendations for good Xinjiang food obviously don’t cover everything there is to try…but it’s a good start. If you have the opportunity to eat each of these foods at least once while you’re here, you will have had a well-rounded taste of Xinjiang cuisine.

NOTE: I realize that some people may take offense at my use of “Xinjiang food” or “Xinjiang cuisine”. I choose to sometimes use this phrase not out of discrimination against the majority Uyghur people but out of recognition that the region’s cuisine is comprised of multiple ethnic groups – Uyghur, Hui, Kazakh, Tajik, etc.

VIDEO | The Best Xinjiang Uyghur Food

Because the written word doesn’t accomplish enough in the quest to describe ethnic cuisine, the next best thing besides taking you to a restaurant is to show it to you. Take a few minutes and join me here in Xinjiang as I introduce my top 10 favorite Xinjiang dishes!

Would you like to have an easy reference guide of these and many other Xinjiang foods? Click below to download the FarWestChina guide that gives you all of these foods written in English, Chinese, Pinyin and Uyghur!

Download the Uyghur Food Guide

Top 10 Uyghur Foods & Xinjiang Foods

To give you a quick rundown, here are the ten foods I recommend you try while traveling to Xinjiang.

1. Uyghur Polo: Known throughout Central Asia as “rice pilaf”, Uyghur polo is a tasty mix of rice, carrots and lamb meet slow cooked in oil. It is without a doubt the most popular Uyghur dish in Xinjiang.
2. Uyghur Laghman and Hui BanMian: The Uyghur and Hui have similar dishes here – laghman and banmian. The concept is simple: pulled noodles covered in a concoction of meat, vegetables and oil.
3. Lamb Kebabs: A staple of the Uyghur diet, lamb kebabs will have you drooling over a kind of meat you never thought you’d love – lamb. If you like kebabs, you might enjoy the conversation with a Uyghur friend of mine who told me the secrets behind the perfect Uyghur kebab.

4. Uyghur Bread: Again, this is something you’ll find all throughout Central Asia, yet the Uyghur have done a wonderful job putting their own spin on the food. Uyghur bread comes in all shapes and sizes, including flatbread and thick bagel-like bread. I recently had the opportunity to learn how to make Uyghur bread.

5. Uyghur Ice Cream: During the summer months you might see mounds of ice cream being served from street carts in Xinjiang. This is affectionally referred to as “Uyghur Ice Cream”. Although it’s different than traditional ice cream, it’s still the perfect summer treat.

6. Samsa: I once described Uyghur samsa as “a grilled Hot Pocket“. A mixture of lamb meat and onion is covered with breading and baked until crisp. It’s an oily treat (as is most Uyghur food, for that matter), but enjoyable none-the-less.
7. Hui DaPanJi: A lot of people mistakenly think this is a Uyghur dish when in fact it is part of the Hui cuisine. The name directly translates to “Big Plate Chicken” and it’s a pretty good description: it’s an entire chicken, cut up and cooked with potatoes, onions and other vegetables and served on a big plate. Yum!

8. Stuffed Lamb Intestine: This is a surprisingly good dish that’s worth a try. A rice and lamb meat mixture is stuffed into lamb intestine and served along with lamb lung. Don’t knock it before you try it! Learn more about stuffed lamb intestine here.

9. Uyghur Matang: This is a nut snack (walnuts, almonds, etc.) usually sold on the streets by Uyghur vendors. It’s extremely chewy but easy to transport, so it makes for a fun snack on the bus or train.

10. Xinjiang Fruits: Did you know that people in Xinjiang eat more fruit per capita than any other region in China? It’s true, and one of the reasons is that we have the best fruit. Almost every region of Xinjiang has it’s “specialty” fruit and if you can find out what it is (i.e. Hami melon, Turpan grapes, Korla pears, etc.), buy some to enjoy.

Conclusion | Best Xinjiang Foods?

So what do you think of this list? Like I said, I’ve left a number of great dishes off the list. If you think one of your favorites is worth a mention, please let me know in the comments below!

The post What Should I Eat in Xinjiang? 10 Best Uyghur Foods appeared first on The Nanfang.

Alexander of the amazing blog Synapticism sent this around Facebook. This is part one of a three part series on US Vietnam servicemen doing R and R in Taipei — he described it as cringeworthy as you would expect. Mention of Taipei starts after the 6 min mark, but part two is the good part.
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Daily Links:

• Ralph Jennings’ awful piece on 3 reasons China is better than Taiwan caused a storm of indignant laughter across the intertubes on Reddit and Facebook. Dissident, activist, and politician Wuer Kaixi responded at Medium.com. FOARP, very familiar with both China and Taiwan, also has a piece.
• Speaking of silliness, this hilaribad piece on why you shouldn’t leave Hong Kong for Taiwan will leave you ROFLMAO. A definite quality drop for EJN insight there….
• News Lens consistently puts out good stuff on Taiwan. Here is one on the new union for media workers. And another on revitalizing Dadaocheng.
• Scholar Gary Rawnsley discusses Taiwan’s inability to talk to the outside world.
• Individuals who protested the name “Chinese Taipei” at a recent baseball match and had the banner ripped from their hands in a video that went viral on social media, received an apology from the baseball association.
• KMT hacks on the asset law. The smell of fear is strong….
• Tourism crisis = blessing in disguise
• Semiconductor industry revenues to rise
• Taipei number 2 holiday destination among S Koreans
• Focus has a good three parter on the effects of the Hsuehshan Tunnel, (part2, part3)

The post Amazing Footage Of US Vietnam War Servicemen on Taipei R&R appeared first on The Nanfang.

In North America, ‘Beyond‘ has failed to match the box office receipts of its predecessor, 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness($228.8 million vs $151.4 million), and the new film’s worldwide box office revenue sits at a paltry $244.2 million compared to the $467.4 million grossed by ‘Darkness.’

A fourth chapter is already confirmed in the works, but one has to wonder if even a robust performance in China, bolstered by the support of local Chinese heavyweights Alibaba and Huahua Media, will help ease investors’ worries that the franchise is beginning to fade? Below, CFI takes a look at Star Trek Beyond’s box office potential.

Star Trek Beyond (星际迷航3：超越星辰)

CFI Score – 7/10

China Distribution: China Film Group Corporation (中国电影集团公司)
U.S. Distribution: Paramount Pictures

Following investments in Paramount sequels Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Alibaba Pictures, the production arm of Jack Ma’s e-commerce giant, has teamed-up again with the Hollywood studio on an undisclosed investment in this latest Star Trek.

The Alibaba-Paramount partnership thus far, however, has resulted in underperformance at the box office. ‘Rogue Nation‘ grossed $135.6 million last year in China, where many analysts expected larger returns for the Tom Cruise vehicle. In Alibaba’s 2015 annual report, the company reported the film contributed just $10.6 million in revenue and $1.1 million in profit to its bottom line.

This summer’s Ninja Turtles sequel also had a woeful box office performance, grossing just $58.9 million despite a prime summer release date, well below the $62.1 million grossed in China in November 2014 by the original ‘Turtles’ film.

Huahua Media (华桦传媒), a fast growing marketing company with global film ambitions of its own, also joins Star Trek Beyond as an investor.

Huahua previously honed its marketing chops on Transformers: Age of Extinction and Cloud Atlas, two films whose Chinese box office exceeded their North American numbers.

For Star Trek Beyond, Huahua collaborated with China’s top-rated variety show Happy Camp. The Hunan TV production aired an episode partly devoted to the film with exclusive cast interviews and segments previously recorded at Paramount.

Happy Camp’s host Xie Na—a.k.a. ‘Na Na’—and husband/pop-star Jason Zhang acted as cultural ambassadors for Star Trek Beyond, appearing at Comic-Con and promoting the film to their combined 120 million+ Weibo followers. Zhang recorded ‘Star Trek’s Chinese theme song, a funky pop-synth anthem entitled Lost in the Stars.

All of the local marketing gives Star Trek Beyond significant box office clout beyond most Hollywood releases in China and the film should be able to hit RMB 700 million ($105 million), doubling the total box office of Star Trek Into Darkness.

The post Paramount’s Star Trek Campaign in China Reaches For The Stars appeared first on The Nanfang.

Reliably pro-Beijing newspaper Sing Pao accused Hong Kong Chief Executive CY Leung and his minders in the Liaison Office of building a ‘Hong Kong independence’ threat out of nothing, as part of factional struggle within the CCP. The article said the Liaison Office’s interference in local affairs was damaging the city, and it called for central government discipline enforcers to step in. Criticizing CY is not such a big deal, but for a patriotic organ to make allegations against Beijing’s official emissaries in town suggests either a death-wish or the influence and protection of someone very high up in the Chinese power structure. (By ‘make allegations against’ we mean ‘blurt out the well-known obvious truth about’.)

Wen Wei Po, an arm of the Liaison Office, reports that Mainland police want Sing Paoowner Gu Zhuoheng for a P2P money-lending scam in Shenzhen – a thing dating from last year. Mainland police regard him as a fugitive, on the run (presumably not in Thailand, or Causeway Bay).

The South China Morning Post files it under ‘Media’. Really…It is hard to imagine that Gu’s paper is attacking the Hong Kong authorities to somehow divert attention from Mainland criminal charges against him – though in the world of Mainland tycoons with political links, anything is possible. The more rational explanation is therefore CCP infighting.

As Mark O’Neill said on RTHK this morning, this sort of Mainland power-struggle BS isn’t supposed to break out here in Hong Kong. The well-water and the river-water, those of us with long memories will recall, should not mix. As other past Communist officials put it, Hong Kong is ‘an economic city, not a political city’; we’re not supposed to squabble about our own local affairs, let alone host the CCP’s internal bloodletting.

The Sing Pao thesis is that CY and the Liaison Office are part of a ‘hawkish’ faction in the
Communist Party. This implies that a ‘less hawkish’ faction is, via Sing Pao, stabbing them in the back. In Mainland government office-politics, it’s usually the other way round: officials in Tibet and Xinjiang who try to accommodate local culture end up being denounced and replaced by tough Han-supremacists who demolish temples and ban beards. No-one ever lost their job for being too hawkish. But the allegation here is that CY’s invention of an HK Independence movement is not just about career-boosting, but ideological struggle at top national leadership level.

If the ‘hawkish’ faction is part of some group (Jiang Zemin/princelings/rogue PLA/etc) opposed to Xi Jinping, CY and his Liaison Office buddy Zhang Xiaoming are toast. (Either that, or Xi is.) If this ‘hawks’ faction is onside with him, Xi will keep them very much in office as a matter of being seen to maintain and consolidate his control. Perhaps, if we are to cover all possibilities within this murk, the faction could be hawkish but with no strong feelings either way on Xi. A Hong Kong Legislative Council election is such an innocent and inconsequential child’s game, isn’t it?

If CY Leung were active in some ultra-nationalist/xenophobic Communist Party coven at war with modernizing/internationalist rivals in the hallways of Zhongnanhai, it wouldn’t be that much of a surprise. In fact, it would be a shock – almost disappointing – if hewasn’t. But to the extent he cares about his local image, it’s unhelpful, however much he cares about old people’s teeth. The timing isn’t great (we were supposed to be jumping up and down over Olympic gold medalists and the G20 thing, and voting for Starry on Sunday, and mocking the idea of John Tsang as next CE). And whatever it is that’s going on, it’s making ‘One Country Two Systems’ looking more than ever like a bad joke.

I mean, how Mainland is this…

The post The Good News: Hang Seng Index Above 23,000 appeared first on The Nanfang.

At top left, a localist election candidate dares the government to follow through with its threats and ‘take action’ against him for mentioning the dreaded ‘I’ word. At top right, the pro-Beijing Sing Pao accuses Chief Executive CY Leung and Beijing’s Liaison Office of deliberately stirring up the HK Independence scare; the paper demands that the Mainland’s disciplinary system investigate. At bottom left, ex-Chief Secretary Anson Chan also expresses a suspicion that CY has invented the HK Independence menace to win himself a second term. And at bottom right, like a Greek chorus, a forlorn, halftone quarter-page government ad desperately pushes the much-derided blurb about ‘choice’ to urge people to vote on Sunday.

While the Hong Kong government barred some localists from running in the election, it let some others onto the ballot. (You can imagine any reason you want: maybe it was a cunning attempt to nonetheless maximize the number of pan-dem rivals, or maybe it was confusion, or just stupidity.) Now officials are shocked to find that some of these young and insolent splittists are calling for independence on the hustings. A severe-sounding waffle-statement warns that some sort of penalties could follow – though no word of what, how or why.

Media observers worrying that the South China Morning Post is becoming indistinguishable from China Daily will be heartened to hear that the former files this story under the category ‘anti-separatism’, while the latter goes for plain ‘politics’…

To bar a candidate from the election at this stage would involve blotting them out from the already-printed ballot papers, or declaring them (and their votes) invalid when announcing the results. That would mean additional legal appeals, and presumably an even greater chance that the courts will order new elections. Either way, it’s more of an embarrassing mess for CY and the Liaison Office. If the courts back the separatists’ right to run, it raises the possibility of an ‘interpretation’ by Beijing to give the Basic Law hitherto non-existent meanings criminalizing ideas.

Which bring us to the anti-CY/Liaison Office Sing Pao article. It’s one thing for Dame Conscience to say this sort of thing at a Foreign Correspondents Club lunch, but different for a supposedly loyal media outlet – especially when it also points the finger at the Liaison Office. This organization micro-manages pro-Beijing media and, indeed, has essentially taken control of the local administration’s counter-revolutionary/national security-related work, which means pretty much everything the Hong Kong government is doing these days, apart from bus timetables and dog-catching.

The idea that CY and his master Zhang Xiaoming at the Liaison Office could be caught up in some sort of Beijing power-struggle sounds too tantalizing to be true. There was a bit of gossip about central government inspectors looking at officials posted to Hong Kong and/or CY’s UGL payment, but it was brief. There are all sorts of possible scenarios involving everything from Zhang Dejiang’s recent visit to Hong Kong, to Xi Jinping’s ongoing purge, to an anti-Xi backlash and coup – before long you have a Falun Gong newspaper’s report-thriller.

All we can do is watch the hangers-on, opportunists and shoe-shiners in Hong Kong who are more than averagely publicly and deeply committed to the highly unpopular CY. Do they look nervous? Are they suddenly keeping a low profile? Do they seem a bit distant? Are they avoiding eye contact? You know the signs.

The cops are preparing for an election day uprising – but that’s probably the usual ‘too-much-budget/too-much-manpower/paranoia/autism’ syndrome…

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