Truth About China
Why China's buildings crumbled
By Geoffrey York | The Globe and Mail (Canada)
May 15, 2008
The bodies of the children were lined up in a long row in the mud of a basketball court, just outside the flattened school. Every few minutes, another corpse was brought out of the rubble, carried on a wooden door, covered in rags.
In a futile attempt at privacy, the bodies were sheltered by beach umbrellas or pup tents, incongruously set up in the mud. Grieving parents sat wailing or numb in tiny school chairs beside the bodies. In the Chinese tradition, they burned paper money and lit candles and incense sticks for the victims. Then, in an explosion of firecrackers, they bid a final farewell to their children.
The death toll in Monday's earthquake in Sichuan province is still soaring. More than 40,000 people are dead, missing or buried in the rubble, according to the latest count. And with dangerous cracks appearing in several hydro dams and reservoirs around the earthquake zone, another disaster could be looming.
But while rescue crews fought to reach the victims, awkward questions were being asked about the tragedy. One man, gazing at the corpse of his nine-year-old cousin, said he had disturbing evidence that could explain the collapse of the five-storey Juyuan school building, along with eight other schools in the region.
The man, who gave his surname as Ren, is a 32-year-old steel worker who has worked for a decade in the local construction industry. He said he always knew that the Juyuan school was a disaster in waiting. Local officials, he said, had pocketed money that was budgeted for the school, while a private construction company had saved money by cutting corners on the project.
After the temblor, when he picked up a chunk of concrete from the flattened school, he was appalled by the evidence of shoddy construction. "It crumbled very easily," he said.
To boost its profits, the company used iron instead of steel in many parts of the construction of the building, Mr. Ren said. It cut back on the size and number of steel braces in the cement foundation slabs. And it used cheap materials to make the concrete walls, weakening the entire structure.
"The supervising agencies did not check to see if it met the national standards," he said.
A note from the editors of this website
May 12, 2008
We deeply mourn the loss of thousands of innocent lives as a result of the terrible earthquake that struck the Sichuan province in China at mid-afternoon today.
Africans Forced to Leave China on New Visa Rules, Post Reports
By Aaron Pan | Bloomberg News
May 11, 2008
Africans living in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou are being forced to leave the country because of new visa policies, the South China Morning Post reported, citing an unidentified spokesman for the community.
Nearly half of the 10,000 Africans in the city have already been forced to leave because their visa-renewal applications have been denied and at least 100 people are stranded in Macau without enough money to return home, the newspaper reported.
African nationals in the city have been running small businesses on flexible, six-month ``F'' visas and are now being given only tourist visas of up to 15 days, the Morning Post said.
The General Committee of African People in Guangzhou has sent a letter to 10 African embassies in Beijing asking them to press the Chinese government on the issue, the newspaper added.
Child Labor Rings Reach China's Distant Villages
By David Barboza | The New York Times
May 10, 2008
The mud and brick schoolhouses in the lush mountain villages of this remote part of southwestern China are dark and barebones in the best of times. These days, they also lack students.
Residents say children as young as 12 have been recruited by child labor rings, equipped with fake identification cards, and transported hundreds of miles across the country to booming coastal cities, where they work 12-hour shifts to produce much of the world's toys, clothes and electronics.
"Last year I had 30 students. This year there are only 14. All the others went outside to find work," said Ji Ke Xiaoming, 35, a primary school teacher whose students in Erwu Village are mostly ages 12 to 14. "You know, we are very poor. Some families can't even afford a bag of salt."
China is now investigating whether hundreds, perhaps thousands, of poor children of the Yi ethnic minority group in Liangshan were lured or even kidnapped to work in factories that are increasingly desperate for the kind of cheap labor that powered China to prosperity over the past two decades.
Labor recruiters -- government investigators and some local residents portray them as con men -- have connected two radically different parts of China's turbulent society. They have brought together ethnic minorities untouched by economic development in their mountainous isolation, and factory owners in the prime export manufacturing zones of southern Guangdong Province, near Hong Kong.
Exporters have struggled to adjust to soaring inflation, a fast-rising currency and, with some irony, stricter enforcement of labor laws that make it harder to hire regular workers on a seasonal basis. Using child workers from a remote region, many of whom cannot even speak Mandarin, the country's main national dialect, have provided a temporary, albeit illegal, solution.
A scandal involving Liangshan's children first came to light late last month, when Southern Metropolis, a state-run newspaper, reported that as many as 1,000 school-age workers from the area were employed in manufacturing zones near Hong Kong.
The report was deeply embarrassing for Beijing, which is preparing to host the Olympics and coping with international criticism of its handling of riots in Tibet. Last week, the authorities in Liangshan said they had detained several people for recruiting children and illegally ferrying them off to factories.
And officials in Dongguan, one of the manufacturing zones where the children worked, said that they had "rescued" more than 160 young people from factories. The legal minimum working age in China is 16.
Now, officials have begun to play down the scandal, saying there is little evidence of widespread violations of child labor laws. A two-day government sweep involving more than 3,000 factories around Dongguan, which was conducted after the initial raids, turned up only 6 to 10 children, officials said.
But residents of Liangshan say abject poverty, drug abuse and a lack of jobs have forced many children to head for factories. Sometimes it is with their parents' permission. Other times, children disappear, on their own or with job recruiters, and then call home from a factory dormitory, hundreds of miles away.
China reluctant to prod Myanmar over aid
By JOE McDONALD, Associated Press Writer | San Francisco Chronicle
May 10, 2008
China faces mounting appeals to prod cyclone-ravaged Myanmar to allow access to foreign aid workers but is giving no sign it will use its influence over its ally, insisting instead that the world respect the military junta's sovereignty.
The disaster is a reminder of China's close ties with dictatorships such as Zimbabwe, Sudan and Myanmar -- also called Burma -- at a time when Beijing wants to use the Summer Olympics to polish its global image.
Human Rights Watch appealed Saturday to China to help persuade Myanmar -- or force it, if necessary -- to drop restrictions on assistance.
"China and Burma's other friends should lead international efforts, including at the U.N. Security Council, to persuade or compel Burma to accept the international aid that cyclone survivors so badly need," the group's Asia director, Brad Adams, said in a statement.
China won't guarantee Web freedom over Olympics
By Ben Blanchard - REUTERS | via (UNCENSORED) Yahoo! News
May 08, 2008
China will not guarantee it won't censor the Internet over this summer's Beijing Olympics, nor can it guarantee to stamp out piracy of Olympic-branded goods, officials said on Thursday.
Wang Wei, executive vice president of the Beijing Olympic organizers, had promised media would have "complete freedom" to report over the event, but rights groups have regularly criticized China's commitment to that pledge.
China maintains a tight grip over the Internet, whose use is exploding in the world's most populous nation, preventing access to sites it considers anti-government, such as those of the banned spiritual group Falun Gong or Tibet independence groups.
"China has always been very cautious when it comes to the Internet," Technology Minister Wan Gang told a news conference as the Olympic torch was being paraded atop Mount Everest.
"I've not got any clear information about which sites will be shut or screened. But to protect the youth there are controls on some unhealthy websites.
"We will guarantee as much as possible" that sites will not be blocked over the Olympics, he added. "Every country limits access to some websites. Even in developed countries not every site can be accessed."
As part of China's plan to hold a "high-tech Olympics," broadband wireless Internet services will be widely available, according to a handbook issued at the same news conference, to ensure "convenience for journalists (and) promptness of news."
Last week, the United States said again it was concerned about Internet controls in China.
Chinese Suppliers Suffer with Carrefour Boycott
By The Epoch Times
May 04, 2008
After the French protest at the Beijing Olympic Torch relay, official Chinese media have been highly critical of France. Since then, a retaliatory boycott on French goods has been advocated, resulting in a Chinese protest and boycott of the France-invested retailer Carrefour. Yet the escalating boycott has begun to unintentionally hurt Chinese suppliers of Carrefour as well.
On April 24, a food supplier in Beijing received a fax from Carrefour requesting a goods return. "If the boycott continues, we will certainly suffer greater loss in the future," said the helpless supplier who mentioned that other food suppliers also received goods return notice from Carrefour.
A Beijing supplier was told to go to Carrefour and process 70 boxes of returned goods, or their order would be null and void. "Seventy boxes equates to about a 10 day sales amount in Carrefour," explained the supplier.
According to a China Business Journal report, from the over 100 Carrefour outlets, 95 percent of the goods come from over 1,000 local suppliers in China. Based on Carrefour's unconditional goods return contract, the loss from returned goods will eventually be borne by the suppliers.
"The protests in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Suzhou are relatively restrained," said a Carrefour manager, whose name was withheld by request, "The protests outside our stores in Hefei, Xuzhou, Kunming, Changsha, Wuhan, and Qingdao are very intense." Carrefour stores in Wuhan and Hefei have had to suspend operations due to the protests.
"Because of the boycott, our total sales declined almost 20 percent in the past few days. We are gradually receiving goods return notices from various Carrefour stores," said the manager.
Yang, a General Manager from the Shanghai Chengxie Logistics Distribution Ltd. is very concerned as his company supplies between 70 to 80 percent of the goods for Carrefour Shanghai. In his opinion, many goods have to wait two months before one can see the true impact of the goods return on them.
Yang said that for Carrefour, the incident is merely a sales loss in the short term, and subsequently a partial profit loss. But the real victims are the over 1,000 Chinese suppliers, he said.
Yang explained that Carrefour normally operates on a three-month accounting cycle and returns goods unsold in two months. "Now the goods return rate for Carrefour is about eight percent," said Yang. "If the rate reaches over 20 percent after one or two months, it will hurt the suppliers greatly, especially the food suppliers."
A fresh produce supplier verified that with fewer Carrefour customers, the fresh produce may be affected the most. "Our product sales will decrease at least 30 percent on the whole, and the returned products that cannot be sold will all be borne by the suppliers."
China 'underwriting' atrocities in Darfur: Farrow
By Agence France Presse | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
May 01, 2008
US actress and activist Mia Farrow accused China on Friday of "underwriting the atrocities in Darfur" as she tried to put pressure on Beijing to end years of bloodshed in the Sudanese region.
Farrow, speaking in Hong Kong as the Olympic torch relay was borne through the southern Chinese city, is using the high profile of this summer's Beijing Games to highlight China's support of the Sudanese government.
"It isn't a pretty way to say this, but China is underwriting the atrocities in Darfur through the oil revenues which now top 4 billion US dollars a year," she told AFP in an interview.
"Some 70 percent of that money has been used to attack the population of Darfur."