China

By Melissa Chan in Asia on January 23rd, 2012

It's the first day of the lunar new year in China. And what better way to celebrate than to kick off a four-part series on China's Communist Party?

This is the Year of the Dragon. The dragon is a great symbol of China, but its arrival actually portends bad luck and a challenging year ahead. 

By Gabriel Elizondo in Americas on January 2nd, 2012
Hi, old friend! Obama and Rousseff in Brasilia in March. [Roberto Stuckert Filho/PR]

In one of her last official appearances of 2011, on December 22, Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s president, arrived in a sweltering gymnasium in downtown Sao Paulo to give a speech to a few hundred working-class social activists.

In her speech, she mentioned “Lula” more than 10 times.

At one point the audience briefly broke into chants of “Lula, Lula, Lula!”

Lula wasn’t even present.

“Lula” is Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the wildly popular and charismatic former president of this country.

This is the man who in 2009 told a ballroom of CEOs at a regional World Economic Forum meeting in Rio de Janeiro he was going to scrap the speech his advisors had prepared and instead gave a blistering and empassioned critique of how the rich, developed nations were resonsible for the global economic mess and it was poor all over the world paying the price.

By Marga Ortigas in Asia on December 22nd, 2011


I wanted to write something for the blogs from the devastation in the southern Philippines this week ... But I can't seem to find the words... 
 
Looking through old journals though, I found an entry written in China while on assignment there right after the earthquake in 2008.  

I find it's exactly what I'd like to share now - something I first learned in Gaza ... and Baghdad ... and it was reiterated years later in China, and more recently in Japan.
 
It echoes again here in the flood-ravaged areas of northern Mindanao.
 
23, May 2008
Chengdu, China 
By Abid Ali in Business on November 1st, 2011
European stocks open sharply down as proposed referendum on Greek bailout casts doubt on eurozone recovery prospects. [Reuters]

We had a deal of sorts from the eurozone leaders - but it was a terrible deal for Greece. Now it seems the Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has flown back to Athens, and in the cold light of the day, realised he and his people had been sold down the river. Hence a referendum. 

You see German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to keep kicking the can down the road. There is no legal framework to stop eurozone nations spending beyond their means. And the German nation doesn’t want to bailout anyone - by coming forward with an incomplete deal the pressure is on Italy, Spain and France to find more austerity measures. It’s the German way of keeping the house it built in check, let the markets (bond investors) demand more interest of new bonds sold.  

Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy may not want to read this: but can you believe the world’s biggest and richest trading block is begging China for money?

By Melissa Chan in Asia on September 9th, 2011



In 2009, the year of our first visit to Ordos, China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 9.1 per cent, and it was easy to see why.

We had seen the factories producing for the rest of the world, the Louis Vuitton stores popping up across the country, and even witnessed farmers in the cave dwellings of Gansu with their mobile phones.

However, with Ordos, we witnessed the other side of the coin: local officials in the provinces were hell-bent on boosting their regional GDP - often a criteria for their promotion.

If building a road pumped up GDP, then building a whole city would really propel GDP growth to unknown heights.

By Melissa Chan in Asia on July 16th, 2011
Former Nepalese King Gyanendra walks on the red carpet in Lumbini along with Queen Komal Raiya Laxmi Devi Shah [Getty]

The town of Lumbini in Nepal is where the Buddha was born as Prince Gautama Siddhartha, before achieving enlightenment more than 2,500 years ago.

Now China is leading a project worth $3bn to transform the small town into the premier place of pilgrimage for Buddhists from around the world.  Little Lumbini will have an airport, highway, hotels, convention centre, temples and a Buddhist university. That's in addition to the installation of water, electricity and communication lines it currently lacks.

That's a lot of money anywhere - but especially for a country like Nepal whose GDP was $35bn last year. That means the project is worth almost 10 per cent of the country's GDP. So what does China want back?

The organization behind the project is called the Asia Pacific Exchange and Cooperation Foundation (APECF), a quasi-governmental non-governmental organisation.

By Melissa Chan in Asia on May 25th, 2011
Photo by AFP

A recent survey by the Foreign Correspondents Club of China had some discouraging numbers about reporting conditions in the country.  Ninety-four percent of journalists who responded felt the work environment had deteriorated over the last year.  Seventy percent had experienced harassment or violence of some kind.  And a whopping 99% said reporting conditions in China do not meet international standards.

While many people outside China might have a cognitive understanding that reporting here is difficult, there's less knowledge of just exactly what kind of difficulties we come across.  Our most recent reporting trip serves as a good example of the particular challenges the press corps here faces.

By Gabriel Elizondo in Americas on April 12th, 2011
A Brazilian flag hanging in Sao Paulo. Photo: Alexandre Rampazzo/Al Jazeera

In the industrial outskirts of Sao Paulo, workers at Bandeiras Sukets, a small flag-making factory, are hunched over sewing machines. With great precision, the workers are stitching together high quality, hand-made Brazilian flags.

But the work of making the Brazilian flag is quickly an evaporating profession inside Brazil. Local flag makers are being put out of business thanks to cheap, low-quality imports of Brazilian flags from China.

In the age of globalisation, Brazilians are finding out that even their national symbol is not immune to China’s exports.

"We have been in the Brazilian flag making business for over 15 years," Sueli da Silva Teixeira, the owner of Bandeiras Sukets, told Al Jazeera.

"There used to be flag making places all over this area, it was a good business, there was a lot of work for everyone.

"Today, no, it’s changed.

By Melissa Chan in Asia on March 23rd, 2011
Photo by Reuters

After weeks of frustration from Gmail users within China, Google has finally come out to accuse the Chinese government of being behind the interference that has prevented users from accessing the site.

This comes after a statement from Google on March 11th that it had "noticed some highly targeted and apparently politically motivated attacks against our users. We believe activists may have been a specific target".

The focus of this piece will be on this March 11th announcement, which has been overlooked or given briefer mention in articles. This is because much of the focus has looked at the general step-up of Internet censorship in China. The point of this exercise is to, with one example, give you a more detailed look at how creepy all of this stuff going on is.

By Melissa Chan in Asia on March 3rd, 2011
Photo by EPA

"China is a stable society. Something like the Jasmine Revolution would not happen in China," explained the officer.  Dozens of journalists have been called in this week to meet with China's Public Security Bureau and I was one of them, sitting in a room as officials videotaped the entire session. 

To the officers' shock - and then satisfaction - I agreed wholeheartedly.  I've posted on this website why a revolution is not likely to happen in China (you can read it here).

But finishing up my meeting with these police officers, it was clear to me that this anonymous group calling for Jasmine Revolution protests in China is, in its own way, winning.

So far, they've shown themselves to be nothing but a few people with a computer and a website.

Yet, they have managed to turn China's security apparatus topsy turvy.

Thousands of police offi

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