Will westerners take Chinese swine flu jab?

A Chinese company has become the first to complete trials of a vaccine against the H1N1 virus.
The question is whether the rest of the world will happily inject themselves with a new Chinese-made drug. After years of safety scandals over everything from tainted blood products to lead paint and contaminate milk, Chinese standards have not enjoyed a great reputation.
However, the company in question (predictably called 'Sinovac') stands to make billions of dollars if it can steal a march on its western rivals in a bid to mass produce a swine flu vaccine this autumn.
Meanwhile, China is apparently taking the swine flu pandemic more seriously than European and the US as children prepare to return to school.
While most countries are reluctant to disrupt normal life, Beijing is taking no chances and will delay reopening of schools in some areas. Class sizes will also be cut and any student who has been in contact with someone with swine flu is being told to stay home.
After its shambolic handling of the SARS outbreak, this is clearly seen as a chance for redemption.

The following people are not dead: Rick Astley,...

Rick Astley is dead. Or so said CNN's iReport earlier today.
They were followed by a herd of news websites who fell for yet another fake-celebrity-death story. Twitter was briefly offline, such was the strain of traffic and message boards filled up with sympathetic messages.
The rumour went that Astley - who has been the subject of more internet hoaxes than any other human being (1)(2)- was found dead in a Berlin hotel. CNN and its vloggers should have known better.
The episode raises questions over the current fad for news-by-tweet. Now that major news organisations are so desperate to be on top of the rumour mill, it paves the way for media anarchy.
Even the Iranian election has been covered on CNN et al. via unverifiable messages posted on Twitter and Facebook, leaving the gullable networks wide open to manipulation.
Why should we trust CNN and the rest if they are looking to us for their cues? We're totally unreliable!
The media need to pull back from this style of reporting before all credibility is lost.

Western media are abusing Tiananmen legacy

First off, I should say that China's state of denial about the events that took place in June 1989 in Tiananmen Square is equally frightening and hilarious. Check out this ever-so-polite BBC reporter attempting to report from the Square today.

CNN had the same experience, with plain-clothed police using umbrellas to block the camera.

But it has also to be accepted that elements of the media and political aparatus in the West have consistently distorted the Tiananmen incident for their own purposes.

I read a shockingly biased feature in the Sunday Times magazine a few weeks ago in which Tiananmen was weaved into a narrative about how communist nations fell in 1989 and how China would have been next if it hadn't been for the crack down.

It was a neat story but not really true. The story of Tiananmen is much more complex than simply being an uprising against communism.

First of all, the protesters were an assortment of groups - students, unions, farmers - with range of grievences. Some complained of corruption, lack of transparency, inflation, inequality.

There was no single alternative political vision. And if there had been, it probably wouldn't have been "We'd like China to look like the U.S. or Europe."

Indeed, some protesters were concerned that China's policy of 'Opening up' its economy to the global market was not communist enough.

That Sunday Times piece appeared to be wistfully reminiscing about the glorious 1980s when Thatcher and Reagan sowed the seeds for the unregulated financial markets which have brought us to where we stand today. Having read plenty of China newspapers, I've come to recognise blatant propaganda when I see it - and this was blatant propaganda.

It's simplistic and untrue to say China would now be a Western-style democratic state if the students had been given what they wanted.

It's also a bit rich to hear the U.S. saying today that China has to face up to its own history. That's true, China does need to do that. But seriously, the U.S. doesn't exactly have a great record in...South America, Africa, the Middle East, S.E. Asia, slavery...and so on.

China is on a slow road to improved transparency and ending corruption by local officials. Indeed, it seems to take a step backwards ever June 4th when it overreacts by censoring the media and arresting trouble makers.

But, having spoken recently to somebody who was in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and is now part of the Party aparatus, it's clear there is a growing willingness to discuss this subject amongst the political elite.

The bottom line is that China is less likely to face up to what happened in 1989 if we in the West are dishonest about the meaning of those events.

Won't somebody please think of the...pandas?

Pandas are cute. No doubt about it. But kids are surely also worth a story.

Why then are there so many stories about how pandas are faring since the devastating earquake that tore China's Sichuan province apart this time last year?

Even at the time of the quake there were articles about how pandas in Chengdu had to be rescued, along with tourists who were airlifted out of national parks in the wake of the disaster. Thousands of people were buried under collapsed schools and we were reading about bears.

Pandas, a species apparently determined to drive themselves to extinction by refusing to copulate, still seem to attract greater attention than the Chinese children killed in the massive earthquake.

Something like 90,000 people perished on May 12 last year - although the exact figure is impossible to guess at - and the story lasted about a week. Similarly, the tens of thousands of people who died in Mayanmar (Burma) last year are entirely forgotten.

China and (to an even greater extent) Mayanmar have not helped by curtailing media freedom in the area, but if you compare the coverage of the Tiananmen Square anniversary next month to the way the Sichuan earthquake is marked this week, I'm sure the coverage will be wildly disproportionate.

Not to mention the obsession with 9/11 and other atrocities which affected a fraction of the numbers killed and maimed in China on "5/12".

Obvioulsy, it's not a competition and news media are right to attach greater significance to man-made tragedies, but the way the Sichuan earthquake fell out of the news in the Western media is quite shocking.

But whatever about comparing human tragedies, worrying about cuddly-looking bears is simply disrespectful to human life.

How to pass the Lisbon referendum in Ireland

Now this might seem like a risky strategy but...
It's time to go for broke if the Irish political class really wants to pass the Lisbon Treaty.
There is understandable discomfort with being asked to vote on the same thing twice (even though we did it for Nice and divorce and abortion).
So let's put two separate questions on the ballot next October.

Question 1: Ireland should ratify the Lisbon Treaty [Yes] [No]
Question 2: Ireland should withdraw from the European Union [Yes] [No]

This will focus minds on whether we really want to be in the EU and steer the debate towards the value of Europe to Ireland.
Even the anti-Lisbon groups who say they are pro-Europe (Sinn Fein, Libertas and some Green-tinged independents) will have to acknowledge that Europe has been great for Ireland. They will spend the debate trying to explain the apparent inconsistency in asking for a No vote on Q1 and a Yes vote on Q2.
The Yes side will have an easier ride because they'll be able to spend time pointing out what happened to Iceland over the past 12 months (it could have been us) and note that Sweden and Denmark are considering Euro membership in the interest of stabilizing their currency.

The number of genuinely anti-Europe people in Ireland is small. Farmers, trade unions, and probably the Church, will rally around Ireland committing to the EU and Q1 would pass by 70% while Q2 gets around 90%.

There are risks, of course. The first being that people will say the Government is trying to be too cute and that it's insulting to try to marry rejecting Lisbon to all-out withdrawal. But given how disingenuous some of the No campaigners were last time ("It'll legalize cocaine, prostitution and abortion") it's clear you can't expect every citizen to read and digest the whole document.

Oh and the other risk...well, we could find ourselves having to ask Brussels to leave the European Union at the end of October 2009.

But fear not - there is currently no legal provision for member states exiting the EU! The Reform Treaty (or 'Lisbon Treaty' to give it its common name) does contain such a clause. So if the only way we could actually have to walk away would be if we passed Lisbon but voted to withdraw...

Protests bubbling over in Chinese countryside

As China gears up for the greatest show on earth in Beijing next month, tensions are boiling over in rural areas and 'small' cities.
Far from the Chinese capital, scores of major protests have erupted over local political and social issues and the government is now openly expressing its concern through official media.

Chinese newspapers are reporting that local officials will be held responsible for failure to deal with public grievances in their counties.
The latest in the series of incidents was recorded in the affluent coastal province of Zhejiang. Hundreds of migrant workers attacked and injured three policemen after an argument over registration of a migrant as a temporary resident turned violent.

Separately, in Guizhou, 30,000 people took to the streets to protest at what they claimed was a cover-up by officials after the death of a 17 year-old-girl. Her family believe she had been raped by the son of a Communist Party official but the pathology report recorded no evidence of sexual assault.
The truth is impossible to guess at but a senior official dispatched by the central government to investigate pointed the finger at local government for failing to address a series of other grievances. It was suggested that the family's outrage gathered such momentum because the public was already angry over mining disputes and cases of communities being forced to move from their town to make way for new developments.

A Professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, quoted in China Daily, said: "Infringement of legal rights of the public is still common ... at the grassroots level. That's why the county Party chiefs are the protagonists of this campaign."
Illegal land seizures, non-payment of salary and village officials' corruption are all cited in Chinese media as having contributed to pockets of protesters taking to the streets.
Even this admission is a sign of some progress from central government.
Of course, as Huang Qingping, a resident of Huaining county in Anhui province, is quoted as saying, the move should not be "another temporary image-projecting act".

A friend of a friend (I realize that's a rather loose secondary source!) employed by the U.S. State Department says around 10,000 'incidents' of public unrest were recorded across China last year.
The definition of 'incident' is likely to be rather broad but it surely indicates that President Hu Jintao's harmonious society is facing serious challenges as China attempts to balance rapid economic progress with growing pressure to respect human rights.

It should be stressed that these do not seem to be pro-democracy protests - at least not in any philosophical sense. People are not demanding regime change or free elections. They just want local officials to stop shitting on them.

A lid will surely be kept on such problems throughout the Olympics but there is clear evidence that Beijing will need to get a grip on problems which have erupted across its territories while central government was focussed on macrcoeconomics and China's image abroad.
If they can't continue rapid progress without trampling on their people, the harmonious society will begin to look a little precarious.

[The pic is of the Goddess of Democracy, a statue made by students during the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square. Those demonstrations were fueled not just by a demand from some for democracy, but also by rising inflation and frustration at the pace of social and economic reforms.]

€50,000 for terror whistle-blowers

Here's a handy way to make 50k - devise a plot to attack the Olympics, pay €1,000 to the family of a poverty-stricken farmer in China's Muslim province of Xinjiang to take the fall, and pocket the juicy reward on offer from the Beijing government.
Anyone providing Chinese police with evidence of a major security threat to the Beijing Olympics could stand to receive up to 500,000 (€46,179.35 to be exact).
A 'threat' can be anything from a bomb, kidnapping or murder of foreigners, or 'sabotage by illegal organization such as the Falun Gong'.
The news came as police in Xingjiang claimed they had cracked five terrorism groups this year to date and ocked up 82 'suspected terrorists'.
The offer is for a limited time only so get your terror threats in by October 31.
Naturally, my plan above has its flaws - particularly the fact that it's morally abhorrent - but what will be the impact of the freakonomic incentive promised by the government?
At the very least, it will stoke up fear among the public. It may also encourage a barrage of paranoia-fueled false alarms.
I had lunch with a bunch of students this week who said they were keen to get out of Beijing and were no longer comfortable with taking the subway for fear of terrorist attacks.
Falun Gong was mentioned as a particular threat and 'could bomb or set people on fire'. I was trying to stress that that bunch of loons have no record of suicide bombings or setting others alight (as was being alleged) but there seemed little point. (FG have set themselves on fire in protest at alleged mistreatment.)
I hope I'm right in predicting that there will be no terrorist attacks in Beijing this August.
The benefits in stoking this up are:
- When nothing happens (touch wood) the government can claim great success in keeping everyone safe. Pats on back all round.
- If there are protests by pro-Tibet supporters, campaigners for rights for Muslim people in Xingjiang, or bloody foreigners harping on about China's support for Sudan's leadership, police can lock 'em up and call them a threat to Olympic security.
€50k well spent.