Tommy says…

The People’s Daily reports that the “White House district secretary” of Anhui, China, has been charged (in Chinese). See a post from another blog here. The “White House district secretary”, for those who don’t keep up with the weird and wonderful world of Chinese provincial politics, is Zhang Zhi’an, the Communist party secretary in Yingquan district, Fuyang city, Anhui province, who ruled his district like it was his fiefdom. He earned his monicker by building a gargantuan office building for the district government (i.e. a local council) that the locals have nicknamed “the White House” (see pic left - a bit more like the US capitol to my eyes). When Li Guofu, one of his underlings, dared to air this extravagance in the national press, Zhang teamed up with the district prosecutor to persecute Li, who eventually committed suicide in custody. I’m not here to discuss the socio-political implications of this case and Li’s prosecution. Rather, this news piece piqued my interest in disproportionately ornate government office buildings, which the Chinese appear to have perfected into an artform. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you — The Land of the Supersized Government Office - A Tour.*

Changxing county (pop 620,000), Zhejiang province; completed 2008, cost A$150m

City government office, Chengdu, Sichuan. Completed 2008, cost A$300m

New UN headquarters? Space port? No - Harbin city hall. Completed 2005, cost A$1bn

City hall of Hangzhou, Zhejiang - due for completion 2008, cost A$300m

Las Vegas? Not quite. Dongguan city government building, Guangdong province

Ji’nan city hall, completed 2007, cost A$1bn, featuring 40 elevators and 45,000 phone and network sockets

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

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* All images are used in good faith for the purpose of review and criticism, and news reporting 

Events, Random facts, Reviews, The Sydney Grind architecture, china, city hall, corruption, government office

Hillary Clinton accepts Obama’s offer of the Secretaryship (word?) of State. Reading through the list of appointees, I saw a lot of familiar names. If, like me, you are an interested amateur when it comes to US politics, the following might help.

Name: Hillary Clinton
Appointed: Secretary of State
You may remember her from: Married to former President Bill Clinton, first lady 1993-2001. Wellesley College, Yale Law School, parnter of Rose Law Firm. Senator for New York state since 2000.
Quote: “We are the president” - according to James B Stewart

Name: David Axelrod
Appointed: Senior Adviser
You may remember him from: Nothing, but he has an Autobot surname (a more introspective variation of Hotrod?) and a moustache that makes him look like he’s still living in 1984.

Name: Gregory Craig
Appointed: White House Counsel
You may remember him from: special counsel to Bill Clinton, defending him against impeachment. A reversible name. Yale law schoolmate of Hillary and Bill.

Name: Ron Klain
Appointed: Chief of Staff to the Vice-President
You may remember him from: Chief of Staff to the Vice-President (Al Gore). Supreme Court tipstaff.

Name: Tom Daschle
Appointed: Secretary of Health
You may remember him from: “Senator Tom Daschle (D)”, from his days as Senate Majority Leader. Wikipedia says of Daschle: “Daschle became a brother of Alpha Phi Omega”. The article does not explain how Daschele’s brother acquired such a quirky name, and whether the surname Omega indicates that said brother was adopted from Greece.

To be continued.

Events, Law, Random facts, The Sydney Grind hillary, obama, politics, US, wikipedia

Yesterday, London’s Telegraph carried a piece about how iPhone’s new voice-recognising Googling tool fails to recognise British accents. Then today, its antipodean and tabloidal namesake tells us that the iPhone gets confused by Australian accents.

I bet the same thing is happening across the world: every paper puts a local spin on what is really the same story (”iPhone’s new voice-recognising Googling tool is crap”). Just imagine it:

“US English accent confuses iPhone” — the Seattle Bugle.

“Vaticano Latin too much for iPhone - Cardinal warns against playing God” — the Vatican City Bull.

“iPhone refuses to understand Korean - Comrade Kim Jung-il denounces evil imperialist plot.” — the Pyongyang Times.

Random facts, Reviews, Technology, The Sydney Grind australia, google, iphone, north korea, telegraph

Unfortunately, I am at my most prolific when I should be studying for exams. All four of them in the next four days, to be precise.

I happened upon the Wikipedia article on family dictatorships - and the related articles on dynasties and political families - and found it in a most unsatisfactory state. I’ve edited it, but it’s got me thinking. When does a political dynasty turn into a family dictatorship, and when is a family dictatorship a monarchy?

The first difference seems to usually involve a value judgment as to the quality of the political system. If the country is democratic, as in the US, then the passage of a position from father to son creates a “political dynasty”, while if the country is judged to be a dictatorship, then this is a family dictatorship. I say “value judgment”, because clearly this is not a question of law. Many “dictatorships” have very nicely whitewashed constitutions and hold regular elections. Often, the boundary can be hard to define. Is Singapore a political dictatorship or merely a political family?

The latter difference also is not one strictly of laws and institutions. In a monarchy, the crown passes within the family by force of law. However, some family dictatorships also enshrine their succession by laws designating the dictator’s heir.

It seems to me that the conditions for consituting a string of leaders from the same family as a family dictatorship are something like this:

1. No general law of hereditary succession. If a regime adheres to a general law of hereditary succession, then regardless of how the leadership is named, it is a hereditary monarchy and not merely a dictatorship. This is a maximum threshold. Anything falling short of this can be a family dictatorship. This covers a broad spectrum of institutional positions. A state may enact an ad hoc law designating the leader’s proginy as the legal successor; or it may hold elections (as to which, see below); or it may simply in practice treat the successor as the new leader. An example of the last is Kim Jong-il, whose position, the chair of the National Defence Commission, was simply declared to be the highest office of the land by government propaganda after the death of his father as the President. Since the younger Kim is not the President, he needed not be elected and is under no constitutional obligation to present himself to the electorate either.
2. Use of political, not “soft” power. A family dictatorship is first and foremost a dictatorship. This means that the regime enacts its policies, including succession policy, by the use of politcal powers as represented by instruments of state. This is a minimum threshold. Thus, a regime that holds free and fair elections, but in which one family, because of the informal power and influence accrued to it, continues to hold political office, is not a family dictatorship. Thus, no matter how many Bushes are elected to the Presidency, the US is not a family dictatorship. The Bushes would achieve disproportionate success because of their economic power and informal influence, rather than control over state apparatus. By contrast, Singapore is arguably a family dictatorship. The (indirect) hereditary succession was instituted through the regime’s control over the country’s political process, which itself is maintained by relaxed separation of powers, the enactment of laws that hamper dissent, and using the law to force dissidents into bankruptcy, jail, or exile.

Family dictatorships share attributes with other forms of government. One is the non-transparent selection of a successor. The selection and cultivation of a successor usually involves the interplay of forces within the regime, and can often be highly personal. It is often highly uncertain, with successors falling in and out of favour over a long period of time. To a greater or lesser extent, the same process is found in all but the most transparent of systems. The second is the “grooming” of a successor. In order to attain either authority within the regime, or a veil of legitimacy in the eyes of the public, the successor is carefully planted in various positions to attain experience, often with a cult of personality built up around that experience. Such a process is also found across authoritarian regimes and in hereditary monarchies. One scene which I found curiously apt during the Olympics was that Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping was chosen to meet with all the visiting Crown Princes - as heir apparents, the selection ensured reciprocity. (A vice presidency does not equal heirdom apparent in China. Since each president now serves for two terms, the first term vice president is a holdover minder from the previous administration, and the second term vice president is the designated successor.)

Since I can’t think of any particularly nice pictures to put in here, enjoy these two Youtube videos:

A day in the life of the Prince of Wales: Part 1 

and

Dear Leader Kim Jung-il is the People’s Inspiration

Law, Random facts, Random thoughts china, politics, prince charles, singapore, US, wikipedia

I bought a Nikon D80 camera on Monday, and am now spending a good part of my afternoons walking around the city like a lost tourist - lost, because I’m constantly digging out the manual to work out how to work one setting or another. I look so much like a tourist that a kindly Melbournian tried to help the confused Asian tourist that I appeared to be.

Read more…

Events, Random facts, The Sydney Grind

Gateways are important to a city. They are more than inlets and outlets. They frame the city. A well-designed and well-positioned gateway creates that uplifting buzz of excitement for those entering, and a pang of beautiful melancholy for those leaving. Take the Zhengyangmen (the southern, front gate) in Beijing, for example. In the olden days, the towering gatehouse would have risen far above the single-storey dwellings of the outer city. The gateway frames the first glimpse of the city. Just as importantly, the bulk of the gate blocks the travelor’s view, enticing him with that tantalising glimpse, and the snatches of sound that filter through the gate - here, the busy market places and restaurants of the Qianmen district, and beyond, the solemn magnificence of the Imperial City. Director Ang Lee used this relationship to great effect in the shots introducing Beijing in Crouching Tiger. 

Few cities today have the benefit of these magnificent relics of the pre-gunpowder era. Those which do not, must create them. The Arc de Triomphe anchors the western end of the Axe Historique, and is a gateway to the historic centre of the city as much as it is a singular monument. Melbourne, as one might expect, uses big slabs of red and yellow…. things. (See some beautiful photos here.)

Read more…

Random facts, The Sydney Grind

A favourite book genre of mine is museum books. When I say “museum books”, I mean those publications which sit curiously between a catalogue and a scholarly publication. These are not meant to be academic treatises. Instead, they showcase the highlights of the museum or gallery’s collection. At the same time, they are more than a mere catalogue. The works are presented in their chronoloigcal and stylistic contexts. For a well-resourced museum or gallery, this means an entry-level introduction to the body of artworks and artefacts represented by the collection, which is accessible but at the same time, of sufficient depth to be interesting for the keen amateur.
This loose categorisation covers a whole range of publications. On the one hand, there are brief highlight catalogues with small blurbs introducing the period or style - in the nature of a (rather heavy) souvenir brochure. On the other, there are comprehensive introductions to an entire movement, illustrated with the museum’s own collection.

One of my favourites from the latter category is The Asian Collection from the Art Gallery of New South Wales. I happened upon this book while roaming the stacks one day at Fisher Library (as one does). Published on the occassion of the opening of the new Asian galleries at the AGNSW, the book traces the development of several strands of Asian art, with comprehensive illustrations from the Gallery’s extensive collection. One part I found most fascinating was the coverage of Chinese and East Asian porcelain - from which I understood exactly what “celadon” is - what it corresponds to in Chinese, and how it fits in with the styles that came before and after it. The illustrations are superb, of course, but the writing was a delight as well. Authoritatively authored and edited, it was also great prose, with great clarity and narrative quality. Read more…

Random facts, Reviews, The Sydney Grind, Travels

I’m writing a research paper on the role of juries in sentencing, which has, perhaps, made me especially sensitive to the way tabloid journalism reflects public opinion. While many assume that tabloid journalism reflects the voice of “the masses” - the plebeian, if you like - in reality this seems to be simply untrue. This point surfaces here and there in the debate on juries, usually in the context of questioning whether there is in fact a crisis of confidence in our legal system, as would appear from the reportings of tabloid media, such as the (Sydney) Daily Telegraph, and increasingly the Sydney Morning Herald.

So the Olympic torch relay is being disrupted by - not angry Tibetans after an independent country, but smiling Western anarchists who have nothing better to do and jump on these bandwagons like an annual county fair. WTO one year, Olympic games the next. If it gives them the opportunity to smash a window or to or bash a handicapped girl in wheelchair or two, then they seemingly don’t care that they are supporting a feudal theocracy that has only minority support in the land they claim to represent.

Many tabloid journalists are probably drawn from the same stock as the anarchist protesters: angry, ignorant, and eager to claim a moral high ground. Not only are they ignorant of the facts, they are also ignorant of the true opinions of the community that forms their readership. So I looked on the Sydney Morning Herald website, and this survey showed more clearly than anything that disjoint. The question asks “Should [Kevin Rudd] use this impressive combination of [language and professional] skills to push Beijing for a fair deal for Tibet?” Patronising, ignorant, prejudiced — laden with so many false assumptions one might question whether the author would be able to find his or her own country - let alone Tibet - on a map of the world.

If one believed that the SMH represented the opinions of the community, one might expect the ensuing answers to go something like this: 50% saying “Yes, Kevin Rudd is not doing enough to criticise the Commie-Nazi pigdogs! Long live the theocratic government of the Dalai!”, and 40% saying “No, Kevin Rudd is such a wimp, and he’s like, half Chinese already - he’ll just roll over”, and finally one lonely comment posted by a Chinese netizen going something like “White people stupid. White people imperialist want to split China. Wait for China nuclear missile, fuckers.” Something like that.

The reality is quite different. About half the comments belong to the first and second categories discussed above. There is a random sprinkling of the third king, but about half of the comments speak with a rational and contrary voice: yes the Tibetans have a right to protest, but the bandwagon jumpers who are bashing torchbearers and trying to steal or extinguish the Olympic flame? Their actions are despicable. They are selfish. They try to attract the spotlight, whether for their own perverse personal satisfaction or to promote a political agenda - in either case, selfishly destroying an event that means so much to so many: athletes, torch bearers, governments, Olympic officials, a nation of 1.3 billion people. No-one should be allowed to mar an event that is sacrosanct as a symbol of world unity and peace for some political agenda- regardless of how right or wrong that agenda is. The marked contrast between this large proportion of the comments with the assumption-laden question clearly shows up how out of touch with their readership the SMH really is.

I started a group on Facebook called “Defend the Olympic flame”. Interestingly, the comments of several people who joined were “I thought I was the only one who thought like this”. If you read Australian newspapers and watched Australian news, you would think so - I certainly thought that I was out of step with the general community, who are all baying for the blood of torch bearers. But no - once again, tabloid journalism has been shown to be the voice of the mob, and not the voice of the plebeian.

Finally, on an unrelated point: lest it be misunderstood that I’m supporting the Chinese government on this one - I have absolutely no sympathy for the “loss of face” (as it has been called by Western media; why must they use an improper expression of Chinese origin only for China? “Loss of dignity” could serve just as well in this context) — by the Chinese government. Ordinary torch relays do not “belong” to the host country. The torch is carried from Olympia - perhaps through several intervening countries - and eventually wind up in the host country. “Relay” describes not only the relaying of the flame from runner to runner, but also from country to country. China, however, just needed to prove how great and mighty it is. So it ships the flame from Greece by plane to Beijing, where the torch relay is declared “open” by the President in an elaborate staged ceremony on Tiananmen Square, before it gets flown - by a Chinese jet and escorted by Chinese agents - to each “leg” of the relay where the torch gets a tour of the city before re-joining the Chinese jet. It’s a strange “relay” when the same player - the host country - controls the torch all the time.  This move by the Chinese government in one sense is inviting the protesters to disrupt it. Whereas disrupting the flame on an ordinary relay would be just that - disrupting the Olympics - disrupting the 2008 rally is in fact disrupting a Chinese torch relay, since the Chinese government both in words and in action has shown that it owns the torch relay. The (London) Daily Telegraph has on several occasions described the London and Paris legs as descending into “farce”. Well, from what I can see, the Chinese government managed to turn it into a farce even before the whole relay got started.

Events, Random facts australia, china, journalism, media bias, olympics, tabloid, tibet, torch relay

There has been a series of indignant articles (couldn’t find the most indignant ones, but here’s one of them) in the SMH over the decision of the NSW government to award the contract for the next generation of CityRail trains to a consortium that will outsource the construction to Changchun Railway Vehicle Company in China. Every time the company is mentioned in the SMH, it is followed by the tagline “a company with little experience of supplying rolling stock to developed countries” (or words to the effect).

So yesterday, riding home on a rickety 1970s CityRail train with dirty seats, dirty floors, mismatched window panes and the suspension of a blender, I realised just how misguided the Herald’s “consternation” is. If you want third world trains, then CityRail has got to be the perfect specimen.

Badly maintained? check. Unreliable timetable? check. Crappy ticketing system? check. Hired goons who terrorise passengers? check. Lack of basic station infrastructure (rubbish bins)? check. Breaks down every two hours? check.

By contrast, rail systems in China are by and large reliable, on time, clean (if crowded), and well maintained. Rides are more comfortable because they’ve bothered to build suspension into the trains and properly maintain the tracks. The newer double decker trains have all the comforts and conveniences of the Millenium trains, but with smoother rides and without the regular breakdowns. (I couldn’t find any photos of Chinese trains - but here are some of the new Shanghai South station.)

What’s more, Changchun Car Company is in fact a joint venture with Bombadier of Germany, which builds carriages for Paris, New York, Hong Kong, Toronto, and Chicago, among others.

So instead of the xenophobic drivel from the SMH, it is more likely that we will finally get some trains that meet first world standards! Then if only CityRail would improve its running to 1930s standards, we’ll be about as well off as Mussolini’s Italy.

* * * * *

Speaking of xenophobic drivel from the SMH, this article is so ridiculously biased and misinformed it is not funny. Writing about Taiwan, and the 2008 Olympic torch relay controversy, reporter Mary-Anne Toy regurgitates undigested Chen Shui-bien’s propaganda by the chunk. She assumes that Taiwan is an independent country, which has nothing to do with China, and that Taiwan by rights should be in the UN and should be treated as an independent country by China and the rest of the world. For example, she talks about “24 countries that recognise Taiwan…” Anyone with any semblance of knowledge of modern Chinese history will know that those 24 countries recognise the Republic of China government (or Taiwanese government) as the government of China. No country recognises “Taiwan”, per se - but President Chen Shui-bien would clearly like you to think otherwise, and Mary-Anne Toy duely regurgitated his version.

I don’t know if she is seriously out of touch with reality, or whether she was just bought by the Taiwanese government’s hospitality (the telling line, in bold in the online version: “Mary-Anne Toy visited Taiwan this month as a guest of its government.”) The truth is, polling consistently show that the vast majority of Taiwanese want to preserve the ambiguous status quo, and only a small minority want to push for independence, or believe that Taiwan is a country independent from China. And, of course, Mary-Anne Toy cares nothing about what the rest of China thinks. They’re all commie-nazis anyway, so who would care what they think?

I think I will stick with Fin Rev. They might care only about money, but at least they don’t pretend bias is neutrality.

Events, Random facts, Technology, Travels

A story that’s been doing the rounds of the international Chinese press (example (in Traditional Chinese)) concerns Taiwan’s Kuomintang presidential hopeful Ma Ying-jeou: while touring the electorate, he was asked to autograph a fan’s shirt. He wrote “盡忠報國” (jin zhong bao guo), “serve the country with utmost loyalty“, a phrase reputedly tattooed on the back of Song Dynasty national hero, Yue Fei. Beside it he wrote “– Yue’s Mother, Northern Song Dynasty”.

Immediately, reporters pointed out his “mistakes”: that the tattoo had been “精忠報國” (the first character being jing instead of jin), and that Yue Fei was of the Southern Song Dynasty. The story then spread across the world, carried by all major international Chinese media, all pointing out Ma’s mistakes.

What nobody bothered to check, though, is that Ma was correct - or at least, arguably correct. While there has long been a popular view that the first character of the tattoo is “jing“, there is no historical evidence for that view. The History of Song, the official dynastic hsitory, records it as “盡“, “jin“. The inscription on the wall of Yue’s tomb in Hangzhou (see my photo at right, larger photo here) also reads “盡忠報國”(jin zhong bao guo). Even if we can’t be sure of what was written 1000 years ago, all the historical evidence point to Ma being correct.

The second matter is whether it should be “Northern Song” or “Southern Song” dynasty. Yue Fei was born in 1103, and enlisted in the Song Army in 1122, and again in 1124. The Northern Song dynasty ended in 1127, replaced by the Southern Song dynasty. By that time, Yue Fei was 24 years old, and an Officer in the Song army of the 7th rank. If the story of the tattoo is to be believed, his mother gave it to him to motivate him to fight for his country. This would hardly be necessary after he had already achieved distinction - and pretty hard to achieve, considering that she was at home and he was fighting on the front! In all likelihood, Yue Fei received the tattoo when he was young - during the northern Song dynasty. Again, Ma is most likely right.

I have another point, though, in addition to vindicating the honourable Ma Ying-jeou, JSD (which is like PhDs for lawyers in the US). This whole story of “Ma Ying-jeou makes a mistake” is based on an erroneous understanding of history. A brief flick through any serious historical source will tell you this. However, it has travelled the world, and no media source has corrected the�error of the initial report. This shows up the poor quality of the international Chinese press. “What about the Chinese Chinese press?”, I hear you say. Well, such an error would not escape the rigorous checks of the PRC state media - or at least I would like to think so. But Chairman Ma being a Chinese nationalist, is viewed as “friendly” by the PRC government, and thus no negative news about him ever gets mentioned, let alone discussed.

As a result, the international Chinese media really has no authoritative, responsible source to look to for guidance, whereas here in the Anglophone world we know we can rely on, say, the BBC even if the SMH sometimes gets it wrong. In the Sinophone world, no media organisation has the resources or the expertise to be that ultimate authority except the Chinese state media; yet censorship and propaganda in the Chinese state media means that it often cannot provide this guidance. Even where it does, its message is often warped by political agendas, so that other media sources are reluctant to trust it.

Events, Random facts, Travels