240 years, American friends! Longer than the Yuan. Longer than the Sui. Not as long as any of the good dynasties, but still a good run!

— The Relevant Organs (@relevantorgans) November 9, 2016

There’s no punchline here.

Via People’s Daily:

Recently a top US diplomat’s claim that China’s reclamation in the South China Sea violates the Feng shui of Southeast Asia is refuted by a Chinese Daoist, whose argument seems to be quite reasonable and makes him an instant online celebrity.

Daniel Russel, assistant secretary of state for East Asia, said in a telephone interview with Washington Post that: “Reclamation isn’t necessarily a violation of international law, but it’s certainly violating the harmony, the Feng shui, of Southeast Asia, and it’s certainly violating China’s claim to be a good neighbor and a benign and non-threatening power.”

Daniel Russel’s explanation from the perspective of feng shui really can’t persuade the Chinese insiders. Liang Xingyang, secretary general of the Chang’an District Taoism Association issued a post on the Twitter-like Weibo, to defend China’s construction works at Nansha Islands in the South China Sea.

Pictured: Liang Xingyang, secretary general of the Chang’an District Taoism Association.

(H/T RFH)

I love this GIF.

This was President Barack Obama’s reaction to Xi Jinping stonewalling New York Times reporter Mark Landler, and it captures — in two inches of movement, half a second, a tilt of an eyebrow — so many of our feelings about Chinese politics and journalism: yeah, it’s opaque and dreary and venal and debasing to common intellect, but what are ya gonna to do? Eh? Not like revolution has historically been any better, so best to leave em to their devices. Or as New York Times reported:

“The Chinese say, ‘let he who tied the bell on the tiger take it off,’ ” Mr. Xi added, in a somewhat enigmatic phrase that was not immediately translated into English. It is normally interpreted as “the party which has created the problem should be the one to help resolve it.”

But man, that shrug — a shrug without budging the shoulder, a shrug that belongs on the Mount Rushmore of shrugs, a ladleful of amazing, pure poetry of body movement, what Chinese politicians can’t begin dreaming of attaining because that would require they sleep, because then we’d have evidence they were human beings, humans able to express basic bafflement, irony, lighthearted acquiescence – that shrug is a fucking mynx.

ABC News has a video of the above: basically, Xi Jinping’s central processor shutting down before our eyes as he removes his earpiece and turns toward the obsequious Chinese media while others in the press corps chuckle at his face with tactful viciousness.

Outside of all the obvious things we can say about this, I’ll humbly submit: it wasn’t even a hard question. Landler, possibly understanding he wouldn’t get a response anyway, asked about visas. Not censorship, Hong Kong, or human rights… just journalist visas, which was apropos considering the US just relaxed its visa policy (10-year visas now available to Chinese travelers).

But Xi – adhering to his weeklong, surely deliberate (and deliberated upon) strategy of staying as aloof as possible, like a 13-year-old hipster at a family picnic, way too cool for those gauche monkey bars – gave his best sulk-and-simper, mope-and-dope, and pressed his “system restart” button. You can easily envision the look without seeing it, how it begins in the eyes, the frumpy old ayi of his soul throwing close those windows and loudly latching them from the inside, muttering under her breath a curse of the self-imposed prison to which she owns the keys; how it spreads, like the widening radius of an infestation, into his brows and cheekbones, causing skin to sag with the weight of profound understanding and grievous regret that life exists and living things live; followed by, finally, a resigned acceptance that the adult world outside his magic fort abides by a set of conventions set through human concert, human strain and effort; oh what the crippled heart will never know; how our eye level can seem like a mountain’s peak to the quadriplegic. We know the look too well.

How fortunate, then, that the cameras focused on Obama, and that reaction, and that GIF. Goddamn I love it to bits.

From left to right: Sima Nan, Zhou Xiaoping, and Fang Zhouzi

Until this week, the social critic Sima Nan was best known for getting his head stuck in an escalator at Dulles Airport. That moment was particularly precious because Nan, a devoted neo-Maoist, had just posted another of his anti-America screeds on Sina Weibo before flying to DC.

But China’s most famous wumao is now back in the news for a more impressive reason: as an impassioned defender of free speech.

The wumao, or 50-centers, are patriotic Web commenters who sing the praises of big government, whether for a paycheck or genuine nationalism – the latter have a special name, Ziganwu, “wumao who runs on his own fuel.” (Indeed, this very site has lately been enjoying their considerable insight –Ed.)

The talk of the Chinese Internet has been the overnight elevation of a new leader to the wumao ranks, “online writer” Zhou Xiaoping. Zhou reportedly was invited to attend a Forum on Art and Literature on October 15 held by “Uncle” Xi Jinping, where he posted a rather blurry selfie that featured the chairman in the background. That he wasn’t wrestled to the ground indicated Zhou’s star was in the ascendancy.

The 33-year-old actually began his writing efforts with a Sina blog back in 2005, where his provocatively titled articles have the measured nuance of Rush Limbaugh on a Vicodin binge. “America-Style Democracy Can Kill You,” begins one. Another warns, “If American Soldiers Invade China, I Will Have No Choice But To Join the Taliban.” Many are plain vulgar: “Some Gossip About the Gay Affair Between Gary Locke and Brother Blind” describes an alleged relationship between the former US ambassador and blind activist Chen Guangchen.

Such sophomoric writings have made Zhou a laughingstock even within the wumao community. His nickname, “Belt Fish” Zhou, was earned for his penchant toward fabricating evidence (Zhou had claimed that social critic Charles Xue was “spreading rumors” about Zhejiang beltfish farms suffering water pollution. When people pointed out that the beltfish is not farmed, Zhou revised his article and claimed the original was by an unknown sock puppet out to discredit him).

Has Xi actually read any of Zhou’s bollocks? Hard to say, but that’s irrelevant now anyway. Following the presidential praise, Zhou is a made man, and millions of readers have to pretend to give a shit about what he says. He has interviews with People’s Daily and affiliated tabloid Global Times (neither mention the beltfish), and has published three articles (“Broken Dreams in the USA,” “Fly, Chinese Dream,” and “Their Dreams and Our Flags”) on Reference News, the best-selling newspaper in China.

Not that there aren’t knives out for Zhou. Fang Shimin, better known as Fang Zhouzi for his relentless fights against plagiarism and fraud, published his own point-by-point critique of Zhou’s “Broken Dreams” on October 21.

The pair has history. Fang himself was maligned by Zhou in a 2010 article titled “This World Will Enjoy Harmony When Fang Zhouzi Doesn’t Exist Anymore.” It took four years, but Zhou’s wish was realized merely hours after Fang’s rebuttal came out: Not only was the blog deleted, Fang’s accounts on Sina Weibo and Sina Blog were soon gone altogether. Within a day, almost all reposts of the article were also erased. It’s as if Fang didn’t exist anymore.

But with Fang, has harmony returned to the galaxy? Far from it, says, of all people, Sima Nan. “Fang held his rationality as always and corrected the untrue parts in [Zhou Xiaoping]’s article,” Sima wrote (pictured below). “I tried to repost Fang’s article but was blocked too. Firstly, I hope that was a mistake by law enforcement; second, I hope the blogger [i.e. Zhou] will stand up and speak for himself; and third, hopefully Fang Zhouzi’s account will be spared from death when the sun rises again.”

Alas, it was Sima’s post itself that was deleted. That led to a meditation on rule of law, the theme of the Communist Party’s Fourth Plenum.

“Learning from the plenum documents should combine realities. There’s one thing I just can’t get over thinking about,” admitted the leftist in an emotional plea. “A popular science writer that I know, whose name now cannot even be mentioned, is blocked all over the Internet. None of his works can be read on Weibo or WeChat. Please – exactly what law did this writer break? Stripping him of his right to speech rights, is that legal? Please help me understand!”

That post was also blocked. Unbowed, Sima made a third petition: “Could [administrators] mercifully allow [Fang’s] popular science writings to be published? Even in the days when the Qin Emperor launched his ‘Burning Books and Burying Scholars’ campaign, he didn’t burn all books… Your grace, please think carefully!”

So, why is Sima Nan doing this?

Well, he wasn’t always been known for being a blowhard. Sima was once a keen critic of pseudo-science himself in the 1990s. He met Fang in 1997 as a guest speaker at a forum led by Fang on academic corruption, according to this interview. “Fang Zhouzi is hardworking, insightful and feisty… many elites choose to protect themselves by not pointing fingers at plagiarism and lies, but some choose to stand out. Fang is a respectable, fearless warrior,” he told the journalist in 2010.

Fang returned the favor by publicly acknowledging Sima as a friend, something which won him few friends (here’s Sima having a shoe thrown at him by one of his detractors). “I don’t agree with his basic political ideas, but it doesn’t mean I can’t make friends with him,” Fang said in an interview with Tencent News. “I’m not looking for a political ally.”

But friendship may be only part of the reason. Political observer Zhang Lifang says that Xi Jinping’s Mao-style Forum is an attempt to seize the “market” of mainstream commentary and “replace it with political control.” Many, like Sima, were tempted to sign up, says Zhang: “But as it turned out to simply mean degrading themselves ahead of cheap scum like Zhou, they are reluctant.

“Even if Zhou doesn’t have a market, he doesn’t need one. If one day all public intellectuals are diminished, [wumao] will lose their jobs too. That’s why you now see many wumaos like Sima Nan talking more and more like public intellectuals.”

That, after all, may not be a bad thing.

Follow Valentina @valentinaluo.

The finger is now being pointed at Rui Chenggang

The arrest of another journalist in China is normally cause for concern: as the news is shared across social networks, tweets of sympathy accumulate, human rights groups and lawyers protest, and diplomats may even issue statements of public concern.

But the detention of economics anchor Rui Chenggang (pictured), reportedly “dragged” from his offices by investigators just hours before his show was due to go live, has prompted almost the opposite – the overwhelming response, as the NY Times’s Ed Wong noted, has been one of schadenfreude (xingzai lehuo, “feel happy about someone’s disaster”). In a rare show of alliance, Western journalists and Chinese state media have instead issued a steady drip of allegations and gloating commentaries about Rui’s supposed misdeeds.

“It’s just breathtaking how many people feel disgusted or offended when he’s mentioned,” tweeted anti-censorship commentator Michael Anti while neatly skewering China’s own public-relations problem: “Such a classic example of negative PR, and yet Rui’s hailed as some icon of the nation’s soft power. There you have it, China’s rise.”

If a man is judged by the company he keeps, Rui was always keen to share his circle with the world. On his blogs, acquaintanceships with the likes of Bill Gates and Kevin Rudd were dropped with the frequency of one who has something to prove; his conversation is said to be similarly peppered with, “As Bill [Clinton] once told me…” or “As I said to Henry [Kissinger]…”

“[He’s] the biggest name-dropper I know,” said a former colleague at state mouthpiece CCTV, where he was a frequent presenter of Economics News Broadcast. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the colleague described her former peer in none-too-impressed terms: “Arrogant. Snobby. Climber.” And then there are his close relationships with many who have already fallen victim to the purge that is scything through Chinese society under the banner of a corruption crackdown (Rui is said to have boasted, for example, about his friendship with Bo Guagua, at least before the senior Bo was charged with corruption).

Still, none of this behavior qualifies as criminal – merely distasteful. Under the microscope, though, are apparent financial transgressions formerly considered de rigeur in Chinese media circles.

According to financial records reviewed last week by Tencent Finance, Rui helped set up a PR company called Pegasus and owned 30% of the firm. Pegasus later made the “Top 1o Chinese PR Firms” list compiled by the China International Public Relations Association and, since 2009, numbered among its clients — perhaps unsurprisingly —  Rui’s employer, CCTV Finance Channel for its Davos coverage (cutting Rui loose on LinkedIn, the WEF’s managing director had this to say on the matter).

Alan VanderMolen: issued denial

Edelman’s owners, via DJE vice-chairman Alan VanderMolen (who inked the purchase of Pegasus while running the firm’s Asia-Pacific operations), later confirmed to PR industry publication the Holmes Report that “Pegasus was engaged by corporate sponsors involved in underwriting CCTV’s presence” at Davos in 2009 and 2010. VanderMolen declined to identify the sponsors and added that there was no commercial relationship between CCTV and Pegasus “to my knowledge.”

Also taken away that fateful day was Li Yong, the Deputy Director of the Finance Channel, where Rui had worked since 2003, bringing the total of those at CCTV under investigation to nine – including its director Guo Zhenxi, producer Tian Liwu, and now its youngest presenter, the once-fragrant female anchor Ouyang Zhiwei.

Rui may have named his company Pegasus, the mythological wingéd horse, but a more apt classical analogy might be Icarus, the youthful highflier doomed by arrogance.

The well-connected 37-year-old presenter, who has been a regular at Davos World Economic Forum since he was 22, did not appear to envisage his own downfall, which was so sudden that his chair and microphone were still in place, awaiting him. In the event, the show aired at 20:30 on July 11, with his co-host taking on sole presenting duties.

Equally ignorant, apparently, were his colleagues: “We kept phoning him before the programme aired, but the calls never went through,” a CCTV staffer told Thepaper. “That’s why we didn’t even take down his mic.”

But his boss, Guo, had been detained on June 1 – a sure sign, at least, that trouble was imminent. Ever the showman, Rui batted off the rumors, issuing a denial through his assistant while taking to Weibo to quote a conversation between two ancient Zen masters (thus, of course, alluding to his own wisdom): “Hanshan asks Shide, ‘People libel me, bully me, insult me, trick me and neglect me. What should I do?’ Shide laughs: ‘Bear with them, avoid them, tolerate them, respect them and ignore them. Give it a few years, and let’s see.’”

In fact, Rui was only given a few weeks. Meanwhile, he was, at least, wise enough to hedge: his wife and child left for the US in June, according to elite gossip, and are not expected to return.

Fellow anchor Ouyang Zhiwei, led away by prosecutors in June, also appears to be in the soup

 ~

It should not be surprising that his career has almost certainly peaked at the comparatively early age of 36. Rui Chenggang was always an early developer. Born in 1977, he began learning English when he was 10, and according to his own claims, was reading English-language books, including Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by the time he reached middle school.

The top gaokao (university entrance exam) scorer in Hefei, his hometown, Rui entered the Foreign Affairs University in Beijing in 1995, where he had a chance to see the world through an international debate contest. He was, he says, shocked to find how Western youth were educated to express their opinions freely, and told Southern People Weekly he felt like an idiot

In 1999, Rui graduated and, turning down offers from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Bank of China, chose to work at an emerging arm of the state-owned CCTV: the English Channel.

A former colleague there, according to the same article, recalls a man “extremely good at the language [English] and quite smart. He… often said things like he ‘wanted to become the bridge of communication between the East and the West.’” Rui was also an avid self-promoter, says the colleague. When interviewing, he’d hand out copies of his book, urge them to watch his programmes and collect photographs of himself with foreign luminaries.

Four years after Rui began at CCTV English, he was talent-spotted by Finance Channel producer Wang Lifen to host Global News Bulletin, a new current-affairs show. He quickly made a name for himself, scrutinizing the scripts and frequently digressing from them, a practice all but unheard-of among Chinese anchors. A pattern in his work behavior began to emerge: superiors such as producer Qian Xi, who has worked with Rui since 2003, called him “the symbol of the Finance Channel’s internationalization,” even while colleagues and underlings recalled an aloof, distant figure.

“He gets close to the leaders, but stays very distant from common coworkers, barely even saying ‘hello’ to them,” said one peer, who asked not to be named because he still works for the channel.

With a 200- to 300-million-strong audience, Rui’s domestic admiration mostly stemmed from public associating himself with world elites at Davos in 2008;  he enjoyed almost rock-star status among younger viewers. But Rui’s link to Davos wasn’t limited to a role in front of the cameras. By then, Pegasus – the firm he still held a 36% share of – had become the executive service provider for CCTV, reportedly finding a studio for the station a mere 200 metres from the main venue in Switzerland. Tony Blair (pictured) apparently called it “the most cozy and comfortable studio in all of Davos,” according to Tencent. Rui reportedly only sold his Pegasus shares in 2010.

British ex-PM Tony Blair with former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks, recently acquitted of phone hacking

Sources in CCTV also told thepaper.cn that Rui’s family set up their own PR firm, with the sole purpose of commercializing Rui’s interview subjects, their schedules and campaign content. Certainly, he is believed to enjoy a close personal friendship with politician Ling Jinhua’s family that has been subject to longstanding rumors.

Such conflicts of interest appear at odds with his role as a journalist, at least in foreign eyes – but then Chinese media is saturated with such misbehavior. Is it against the law? Even the Global Times wondered. “Did [Rui] know that such behavior was illegal?” asked an unsigned editorial on Tuesday. “Perhaps he believed he was in a gray area where some seek personal gains by exploiting their positions. But the anti-corruption campaign not only targets ‘black holes,’ but also gray areas.”

~

Advertising and public relations (gonggong guanxi) is one of the murkiest industries in China (and also, to be fair, elsewhere). The word guanxi implies connections, the ability to enjoy a string-pulling reach that bests rivals: How many journalists and celebrities can you guarantee at a product launch? Which newspapers can be bought off to stay quiet about a scandal?

Ding Shumiao, for instance, the Shanxi businesswoman accused of colluding with the disgraced railways chief Liu Zhijun over projects worth 180 billion yuan (HK$226 billion), reportedly collected nearly 4 billion yuan securing contracts for the high-speed network with Liu’s help. Her company, founded in 2008, became practically the exclusive advertisement agency for high-speed rail, reaped 120 million RMB in 2010 alone from state-owned companies attending the seventh World Congress on High Speed Rail in Beijing, all thanks to Liu.

One of the Finance Channel’s trademark shows, the annual Consumer Rights Gala on March 15, had become another income source for Guo and his gang. Notorious for its toothless exposes of “scandals” usually perpetuated by foreign firms – while ignoring the egregious antics of domestic giants – the show has been widely mocked in recent years for its clumsy nationalism and reporting techniques.

According to Caixin, local governments and companies routinely inquire before annual tapings to see if their products were on the CCTV “blacklist,” and then offer to pay a gagging fee. Other programmes, such as the praise-singing Economic Figures of the Year, are essentially paid services available to the highest bidder. One website operator told Caixin that Guo had often used his influence to ask portals to delete critical posts about companies that had approached him, or other presenters familiar with him, for help (a practice known in China as “black” PR).

The downfall of Rui and his mentor, Guo, can be seen as part of the aftermath of Li Dongsheng’s arrest and, behind that, ex-Politburo security czar Zhou Yongkang’s own (still unofficial) downfall. Li had worked at CCTV for 21 years, since 1978, and eventually became the vice chief of the state channel. He took off quickly from there and moved on to state censors, the then-SARFT, and the Ministry of Propaganda.

It was in 2007, says Caixin (in an article already deleted), that Li hoped to join the Central Standing Committee of the Communist Party, but was hindered by his rivals, who tipped off ministers that his daughter was studying in the UK thanks to illicit “sponsorship” and his brother, who was running an advertising agency, was also benefiting from his positions.

Li’s trouble, however, was “handled, thanks to a senior leader’s help,” according to a source of Caixin. This “senior leader” is now believed to be none other than Zhou Yongkang, once henchman-in-chief of China’s sprawling security apparatus, and whose power network has been steadily eroded since retirement via a series of arrests and investigations (Zhou himself has not been seen in public since December).

Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai – two ex-Politburo heavyweights, now tainting anyone in their midst

The source, however, could not confirm how close exactly the two were, nor the validity of the rumor that Li introduced Jia Xiaoye, the then-CCTV Finance Channel producer, to Zhou, 28 years her senior; the pair later married.

On June 14, just three days after the capture of Rui Chenggang, Li was announced together with Jiang Jiemin and Wang Yongchun, two former chiefs from the CNPC, as being formally investigated. Both had worked for many years with Zhou.

~

While at Yale for a year in 2005 – he is still a World Fellow – Rui was remembered as a self-styled fenqing (“angry youth”), promoting and defending the motherland on a personal mission, whenever he heard “anti-China” voices. He took one law professor to task for calling China “not a democratic country”; Rui argued “Americans always think there’s only one type of democracy, which is the American kind. But democracy has different meanings and different stages.”

On his popular blog, a large part of which is devoted to conversations and photos with his star-studded Rolodex, Rui’s best-known piece is still the one published in 2007, calling for Starbucks to be ejected from the Forbidden City. (That didn’t prevent Rui from having his cake while eating it, boasting of email exchanges with Jim Donald, the coffee chain’s new CEO, as if the pair were close friends.)

Indeed, according to one guest who shared a banqueting table with Rui, the host frequently referred to former US President Bill Clinton as “a very good friend of mine.” Like most of his associates, which once included Kevin Rudd, George W. Bush and Warren Buffet, Clinton seems unlikely to come to the defense of his “friend” in his hour of need.

Former Rui associates include Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Rupert Murdoch and Henry Kissinger

Question marks even surround the true extent of Rui’s wealth. The TV star, who purportedly enjoys an official salary of around 150,000 RMB a year, is known for his cost-cutting ways. At the aforementioned banquet, a well-lubricated Rui is said to have finished two bottles of wine before a Sinopec executive at the table that he could polish off a third. The stake Rui demanded? A Sinopec card, so he could fill up for free in perpetuity.

If that seems grasping for someone who famously drives a foreign-made Jaguar, it may be worth noting that surface is very often illusory, especially in China. One user of Zhihu – a kind of Chinese Quora – claims his client was constantly being hassled to lend his car, a Land Rover, to a wealthy neighbor: one Rui Chenggan.

And perhaps due to his domestic celebrity, Rui sometimes over-estimated his influence abroad. A hotel management student at the University of Nevada recalled that, when Rui stayed at the Las Vegas hotel where she was interning, he made an indecent proposal. When she declined Rui’s offer, the host allegedly became incensed at what he inferred as the suggestion he couldn’t afford the asking price.

According to a PR manager for Emirates Airline, Rui purchased an economy-class ticket to visit Brazil but demanded a free upgrade to first class. Unsurprisingly, he was rejected, but took his grievance to Weibo (writing that “Emirates’s A380 feels really so-so. Although the plane is a bit bigger and looks new, there’s no enhancement to comfort and the space division makes one feel suppressed… Emirates’ trademark fake-mahogany interior feels like only faux luxury”).

Li Yong, the deputy director also arrested, never even made it to Brazil: he was reportedly stopped at customs en route to report on the BRICS summit, though it’s not clear what exactly for. The local rumor mill suggests his arrest may actually be unrelated to Guo’s; the two are said to dislike one another.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” was one of several Shakespeare quotations Rui was fond of tossing into speeches. (In his autobiography, Rui professes to be able to recite entire sections of Shakespeare, Francis Bacon and Bertrand Russell). Alas, it seems that Rui has now exited the stage, apparently pursued by a bear even he can’t tame.

Follow Valentina @valentinaluo (H/T RFH)

Sometimes Tumblr is pretty amazing. #Politbros, everyone:

Here’s a GIF:

Amazing.

More China-related Tumblrs:

• Baidu Translate Fail (via)
• xi jinping looking at things
• How High Are Xi Jinping’s Pants Today?
• Wuluwu

(H/T Laura Fitch)

China came up twice during the State of the Union, tying Israel for sixth place in terms of number of mentions. 

“Business leaders around the world have declared that China is no longer the world’s number one place to invest; America is. (Cheers, applause.) That’s why I believe this can be a breakthrough year for America. After five years of grit and determined effort, the United States is better-positioned for the 21st century than any other nation on Earth.”

“Listen, China and Europe aren’t standing on the sidelines; and neither — neither should we. We know that the nation that goes all-in on innovation today will own the global economy tomorrow.”

Full Transcript

In weird news, netizens on Weibo during the State of the Union were enjoying speculation that the US is run by aliens. Go figure.

While #SOTU dominates Twitter, trending higher on China’s Weibo is #AliensControlTheUS pic.twitter.com/q6Ag7f9Myc

— Simon Rabinovitch (@S_Rabinovitch) January 29, 2014

Look at Xi Jinping eating lunch. When the story broke yesterday that the president of China was spotted in Beijing ordering steamed buns at a local restaurant called Qing-Feng, I noted that we’d be seeing more pictures, since if you can’t take pictures of the president of China on your camera phone, you might as well never take another camera phone picture again. Well, here’s a video, which surfaced on Youku about nine hours ago. It is wonderful in the following ways:

1. As we know, American politics favors extroverts: a politician in a neighborhood canteen might chat up everyone around him or her (“constituents”), pose with babies (even kiss them), create a ruckus; if not quite trying to stand out, certainly not shying away from attention. Chinese politics, of course, operates at the antipode of this civic dance. Watch as Xi Jinping professes his normality — and dignity — by ignoring the people who stand next to him and pose for pictures. This isn’t awkward. He’s just a man trying to eat, like us.

2. At the very start, someone (picture-taker?) says, “Can you see us?” Otherwise the only sounds are ambient conversations and utensils. But at the 17-second mark, someone behind the camera says, very clearly, “Napkins, waitress.” Someone else — presumably the waitress — replies, “Take it, take it.” I’m not entirely sure why this is notable, but maybe because it seems so in place, and, yes, normal. Xi Jinping is able to behave like a normal human being in a public setting, with neither purpose nor agenda. All other interpretations of this scene — whatever we want to make of it — that’s on us.

3. The people who stand next to him and pose for pictures. Particularly this woman, leaning in:

And this guy, so proud:

And this: is Xi Jinping possibly regarding the mashed-up husky-wildcat image on the dude’s shirt? (Note: could be a woman.)

4. On the back wall is a poster that confirms this restaurant is indeed Qing-Feng. The address, for those of you who might want to swing by:

Address：北京市新街口南大街178号 (178 Xinjiekou Nan Dajie)
Phone：010-66182812 or 010-66124087

Jen Haskell on Twitter recommends the Old Beijing breakfast place around the corner though.

5. Did you know Xi Jinping has a huge head? Yeah, you probably did.

UPDATE, 11:19 pm: Here’s another user video showing Xi Jinping actually interacting with people. Also, he really does wait in line!

Youku versions:

UPDATE, 12/30, 4:19 pm: Xi Jinping’s meal cost 21 yuan:

This certainly looks like Xi Jinping in a crowded Beijing restaurant. Weibo user @四海微传播 wrote at 1:20 pm today: “People, I’m not seeing this wrong, am I? Uncle Xi came to Qingfeng to eat steamed buns (baozi)!” The same user messaged again at 1:34 pm: “Uncle Xi queued to buy steamed buns, even paid his own bill, carried his tray, chose his own buns.”

The message was forwarded by none other than the official Xinhua Sina Weibo account at 1:38 pm.

Is this a set-up, in the same way that so many of these public-figure-deigns-to-walk-among-commoners episodes are? That is to say, was it pre-planned, with (undercover?) photographers lined up, with a clear motive? (At this point, we’re inclined to believe that really is Xi Jinping, not an impersonator — if state media is retweeting instead of actively censoring the story. This isn’t a repeat of the taxi incident in April, when Xinhua verified — then retracted — an always-apocryphal Xi-Jinping-took-a-taxi-by-himself story.)

If this isn’t a set-up — if Xi really did just pull a Gary-Locke-at-Starbucks — we have a lot more questions. What restaurant is he visiting? (UPDATE: Here’s the website for the restaurant referenced in the weibo, Qing-Feng Steamed Dumpling Shop, located at Xinjiekou.) Did he grow nostalgic for steamed buns — if so, what kind? — or are Zhongnanhai’s chefs just that poor? Did he really wait in line? For how long?

Below are two more pictures, via Sohu. Surely more will become available on the Internet, if those camera phones are any indication. Then again, we wonder how many of those plainclothes folks are from Xi’s entourage. (The tall dude in the center, surely.)

UPDATE, 12/29, 12:19 pm: A video has surfaced.

(H/T George Chen)

UPDATE, 12/30, 4:19 pm: Xi Jinping’s meal cost 21 yuan:

As reported last month, former security chief Zhou Yongkang, now retired, has been the target of high-level corruption probes since at least late August. “How far and high is [Xi Jinping] willing to go to clean up China’s political elite?” the New York Times’s Chris Buckley asked in a September 25 article.

Now we kind of know. The South China Morning Post reported today, citing unnamed sources, that Xi Jinping is overseeing a “special unit” to investigate Zhou, “bypassing the Communist Party’s internal disciplinary apparatus.”

Beijing police chief Fu Zhenghua will report directly to Xi, according to police and graft watchdog sources. Fu is the first person in the party’s history to also hold the concurrent posts of head of Beijing’s armed police, the Standing Committee member of the party’s Beijing municipal committee and deputy minister of public security.

This news was partially confirmed by none other than CCTV News’s Twitter account at around 5:30 pm.

RT @cctvnews: President Xi Jinping has set up a special unit to investigate corruption allegations against the retired leader Zhou Yongkang.

— tania branigan (@taniabranigan) October 21, 2013

And then, predictably, it was unconfirmed, as the tweet was deleted — just as Western journalists were spitting out Coca-Colas* en masse onto their keyboards.

Now you see it, now you don't: @cctvnews has deleted Zhou tweet

— tania branigan (@taniabranigan) October 21, 2013

*We figure 5:30 is pretty late for coffee or tea.

“Why deletion?” is probably the less interesting of the two questions we can ask. There seem to be many good ways to break a story about an unprecedented investigative unit for a former Chinese leader who happened to be of the most powerful and divisive figures on the Politburo Standing Committee; Twitter is not one of them.

How did the tweet ever get sent?

So @cctvnews has deleted and de-confirmed the tweet on Zhou Yongkang being investigated. Was the tweet the mistake of an intern?

— Jeremy Goldkorn 金玉米 (@goldkorn) October 21, 2013

What if @cctvnews was tweeting the Zhou Yongkang info from a 内参?

— Edward Wong (@comradewong) October 21, 2013

(内参 refers to internal — and confidential — government documents.)

It’s unlikely we’ll find out. But this seems like a reasonable bet:

Safe prediction: @cctvnews will be the most aggressively boring twitter account for the foreseeable future.

— Gady Epstein (@gadyepstein) October 21, 2013

Although you should probably start following the Twitter accounts of state media anyway, just in case. There must be a whole bunch of interns there, always a click away from making news.

(Above image via George Chen)

UDPATE, 10/22, 10:09 am: CCTV News says it was “targeted.”

CCTVNEWS Statement pic.twitter.com/B0iinrjXvt

— CCTVNEWS (@cctvnews) October 22, 2013

The relationship between China’s central and local governments has never been linear or completely top-down. There are times of harmony, but more often, there’s tension. In the recent past, thanks to social media, conflicts and disagreements usually kept behind closed doors have begun leaking into the public domain.

Several recent posts on Sina Weibo by legal organs revealed that tensions are as manifest today as they were during historical times. Many netizens have gone as far to call these posts an act of “rebellion.”

It all started at the end of August when Beijing suddenly intensified its Internet censorship. Celebrity bloggers on Weibo were told to self-censor. Several “online rumor mongers” were arrested. And now, anyone tweeting “rumors” that potentially harm social order and national interests can end up in jail.

As if to mock the anti-online rumor campaign, the official Sina Weibo of Guangdong Supreme People’s Court quoted an ancient Chinese story from 542 B.C., “Zichan Won’t Abolish Town Hall (子产不毁乡校).”

Zichan was a powerful politician in the Zheng Kingdom. As the story goes, officials told him that many people were gathering at town halls to discuss political issues and criticize the government. One politician urged Zichan to abolish such town halls. Zichan refused: “Why abolish them? People go to town halls to discuss the merits of our policies. I will push forward policies that they like, and adjust those they don’t like. The people are like our mentors. Criticism will decline if we try hard to do a good job, but won’t if we use power to suppress people’s complaints. Criticism is like a river. To block a river won’t work. The best way is to lead and channel it.”

Many netizens hailed the courage of the person behind the Weibo account. At the same time, they questioned how a Chinese politician from several thousands of years ago can be smarter than today’s.

As if on cue, “Zichan Won’t Abolish Town Hall” is now a banned search term on Weibo.

Guangdong’ Supreme Court has seemingly started a chorus. Quoting from history or from famous figure is common practice in China who wish to avoid direct political confrontation. More courts have since done the same.

A few days later, the Intermediate People’s Court in Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture in Hubei province quoted Justice John Marshall Harlan from the famous Cohen v. California case:

The constitutional right of free expression is powerful medicine in a society as diverse and populous as ours. That the air may at times seemed filled with verbal cacophony is, in this sense, not a sign of weakness but of strength.

The lack of freedom of speech isn’t the only thing that China’s local legal organs are complaining about. The Justice Bureau of Dongguan, Guangdong province used a quote from Wang Fuzi, a well-known Chinese philosopher of the late-Ming and early-Qing Dynasties, to issue its opinion on corruption:

To severely punish corrupt officials of lower ranks, but to ignore those with similar crimes at the top. As such, the more severely the law punishes, the more corrupt cases there will be, and thus the more chaotic the country will become.

The intended goal for getting government agencies and officials on social media was to allow more open communication with the people. But what if these government agencies, or at least the employees in charge of managing these social media accounts, start to use the platform to openly voice disagreement with the central government?

Liu Guofeng, curator of the Sina Weibo account of Enshi Intermediate People’s Court, resigned a few days after the John Marshall post (though he claimed on his own Weibo that this had nothing to do with the quote).

The government can always tighten its grip on its employees, especially social media managers. But as one netizen wrote, “Suppression and prohibition won’t work in the long run.”

Alia is the founder of Offbeat China, where this post also appears.

How many of these tatted, gangster Chinese leaders can you identify? Five of them seem pretty obvious to me. The others?

Scroll down below for my answers, after I tell you that Redditors are having a fun little caption contest with this, which you should join. (Thanks to Tom Carter for posting the above via Sina Weibo user @毒醉紅塵.)

Also:

By the way, Brazzers is a porn site not blocked in China.

Left to right: Wen Jiabao, Mao Zedong, Li Peng, Deng Xiaoping (middle), Xi Jinping (very front), Jiang Zemin, Hu Yaobang. Two in the very back row are obscured by shadow, but one of them could almost be Barack Obama. Who should they be?

Democracy advocates in Hong Kong clashed with a pro-Beijing group on Sunday at a public forum, renewing a personal curiosity of mine over whether that city has ever held a political public forum that hasn’t devolved into a shouting match with histrionics only monkeys could enjoy.

But we digress. The above picture. That.

A member of Caring Hong Kong Power, the pro-Beijing group, was punched, according to SCMP, which took the photo. The other side suffered injuries as well.

Scholarism member Oscar Lai Man-lok, 19, was taken to hospital after being kicked in the fracas. Police are looking for his attacker, a man thought to be aged 30 to 40. They were called to the scene to handle an assault case at about 5pm. No arrests were made.

One of the forum hosts, Dominic Lee Tsz-king, said he saw a Caring Hong Kong Power supporter kicking Lai. He added that he had been punched in the head himself several times.

Yes, ugly indeed. The two-hour (two hours of political talk in Hong Kong… right, listen, I’m not saying anyone deserved to get assaulted, but organizers couldn’t see this coming? Really?) session was cut short by 30 minutes, mercifully.

Scuffle at public forum delivers knockout blow (SCMP)

The character for demolish (or dismantle) — 拆, chai – appeared on the Chinese embassy in Washington DC on Wednesday morning. According to Voice of America, the characters appeared three times: on two of the pillars on the embassy’s front gate, and on the entrance of an office building.

This happened on the same day as the opening of the fifth annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue, a two-day session between top leaders of China and the US. Vice President Joe Biden started talks by telling China to stop hacking — “We both will benefit from an open, secure, reliable Internet. Outright cyber-enabling theft that US companies are experiencing now must be viewed as out of bounds and needs to stop” — which means you can expect the Chinese to respond by saying basically the same thing. Also on the docket is North Korea, nuclear programs, trade, investment, climate change, the usual.

No group has claimed responsibility for the graffiti, but Initiatives for China sure seems proud of it. They write:

Citizen Power for China, also known as Initiatives for China, has recently launched a campaign, code named the Sparrow Initiative (2nd stage), to defend land rights of the Chinese people and obtain justice for the victims of  China’s violent dismantling and forced eviction activities. We believe everyone deserves to have a home, even a sparrow–. Any brutal action in taking that basic right away from the Chinese people is absolutely unacceptable.

The organization’s founder, Yang Jianli, told Voice of America, “People widely believe the graffiti on the Chinese embassy in the US is in support of the Sparrow Initiative.”

If you say so.

H/T:

@austinramzy Rather see US Embassy in Beijing get 拆'd. One of the ugliest, least-welcoming buildings in a city that sets a pretty high bar.

— Brendan O'Kane (@bokane) July 11, 2013

And he’s gone. Screams the latest SCMP headline (all-caps theirs):

SNOWDEN LEAVES HONG KONG ON COMMERCIAL FLIGHT TO MOSCOW

The report isn’t confirmed, but SCMP notes that Snowden “would continue on to another country.” The Hong Kong government issued a short statement today, in which it said the US’s request for extradition “did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law.”

Since the documents provided by the US Government did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law, the HKSAR Government has requested the US Government to provide additional information so that the Department of Justice could consider whether the US Government’s request can meet the relevant legal conditions. As the HKSAR Government has yet to have sufficient information to process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal basis to restrict Mr Snowden from leaving Hong Kong.

Snowden’s most recent accusation against the US was that the government spies on cell phones and Beijing’s Tsinghua University.

UPDATE, 6/24, 5:53 am: The latest report is that Snowden is off to either Cuba or Venezuela next.