Results tagged “cctv”

Obama's short time in our city might be cut a little shorter. The American President has been hoping to make a town hall styled forum with Chinese students a focal point of the trip. However, the government's desire to censor the event has caused problems: the event has been cut from 1,000-1,500 students to a mere 600, media may be banned (excluding CCTV, of course), and the event may not be broadcast live. The event seems close to cancellation: depriving the American President the chance to directly speak with the Chinese people, and making Beijing seem like it wants to keep him under wraps, would make a poor start to Obama's first trip to China.

We've talked about some of the sillier commercials we've seen on Chinese television, but every now and then, one comes along that actually wows us. This one, by CCTV, is pretty stunning and hopefully will set the bar for tv ads to come. A dollop of ink is dropped into water and transforms into various Chinese painting staples, before moving on to some of the country's achievements and a shot of the Shanghai skyline in watercolor. Cool!

When they changed over the system from Maoist Communism to "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" (as Hu Jintao put it during the last 60th anniversary parade), the CCP apparently decided not to tell anyone what the C in their name really meant. At least according to this video by Doing Business in China, which asks a bunch of Chinese people (some of whom are famous) to define "communism" - with dumbfounding results.

Jackie Chan may be an adorable and well-liked kung fu superstar, but he sure doesn't seem to know when it's time to stop talking. We've recorded several of his gaffes before, including one made earlier this year when he insinuated that Chinese need to be controlled... but this latest interview really takes the cake.

What do the NFL, small Chinese children, and a Taiwanese rock band have in common? Absolutely nothing, until the NFL decided to embark on its latest effort to make professional American football popular in China.

One of the weirdest controversies we've been reading about has been whether or not the Beijing CCTV is “profane.” We're not sure when rumors that the headquarters of China's media mammoth was a “monument to pornography” surfaced, but it seems like it's now serious enough for Rem Koolhaas himself to categorically deny that he ever meant the building to look like genitalia. “I'm extremely sad that the best intentions, the best work of so many people, literally thousands of people, from the architects to the company to the workers, is compromised by this rumor, which as I said has no truth whatsoever,” he told CCTV. What are that chances that this will be enough to convince errant netizens that they shouldn't blow up the building since it shames the Chinese people? Source:Danwei

We thought the dragon boat video was the funniest thing to come out of the otherwise tragic natural disaster known as Typhoon Morakot. We were wrong. This dedicated CCTV reporter decided, in true Al Roker fashion, that the best way to report on terrible weather is to stand right in the middle of it.

• Protest at China TV tower [The Straits Times] "Demonstrators gathered outside a fire-gutted tower near the new China Central Television (CCTV) headquarters in Beijing on Tuesday, protesting against what they called forced eviction, state press said. About 30 residents accused the state-run television station of trying to get them to move from the area to make way for the massive and nearly completed construction project, Xinhua news agency said. After about an hour, police persuaded the protesters to put away their banners and leave, the report said. "
• China Backs Off Latest Rio Tinto Claims [WSJ] "Chinese officials distanced the government from allegations on a state-backed Web site that employees of mining giant Rio Tinto PLC had used years of "deceit" to obtain state secrets that cost China's steel industry more than $100 billion — spotlighting the murky and often confusing way China handles such secrecy cases. The allegations, published over the weekend, had quickly gained widespread attention, as they appeared to represent the government ratcheting up pressure over the case of four Rio Tinto employees, including an Australian citizen, who were detained last month by the Shanghai State Security Bureau on vague accusations of using bribery to obtain secrets that harmed China's national interests."
• Another suspect dies in Kunming police custody [GoKunming] "A man being held in detention in Kunming died in a hospital on Saturday with no clear cause of death, according to a Xinhua report. According to a police spokesperson speaking to reporters on Sunday, 43-year-old Wang Shukun (王树坤) had been held in the Guandu District Detention Center since July 19 before being checked into a hospital by police on August 6. After undergoing emergency procedures to save his life, Wang died early Saturday, the spokesperson said."

Egads! Another CCTV fire! Luckily, this one was not nearly as damaging as the one that happened in February, which basically rendered the not-fully-built TVCC building completely unusable. Yesterday's incident was minor: smoke had been rising from the CCTV building's roof, but the flames had already died by the time firefighters arrived. Unfortunately, the current explanation is not particularly relief inducing. According to a translation by Danwei, the fire possibly "occurred because of the scorching weather, which caused the film on the glass to spontaneously ignite." Great. Isn't flammable exoskeleton the thing that caused the TVCC building to become a fire beacon as well?

Are we finally about to see our own RIAA-like cases here in China? A CCTV affiliate called China International Television Corp. has now sued six online video service providers in the Beijing Haidian District Court. It is asking for 16.2 million RMB in compensation for the illegal broadcasting of its shows online. According to China Tech News, CCTV claims that its distribution of TV soap operas has declined last year thanks to these online video sites. But a representative of one of the providers, ku6.com, said that most of the videos on their website were uploaded by Internet users - a defense that hasn't really had a history of working well in the States. Welp, even if our favorite vid sites shut down, maybe this also means we'll be getting something similar to Hulu for Chinese soap operas soon.

Student-made Chinese internet drama "Living Together" will soon be airing on Chinese TV, marking one of the first times that an all-student production has made the leap to prime time television. However, as Global Times reports in their feature on the program, the plot and other key elements of the ultra-popular show will be altered in order to meet Chinese television censorship standards.

This famous line was said by a very famous professor, Yi Zhongtian （易中天）, on CCTV. Yi Zhongtian, a professor at Xiamen University, is famous for his lecture series on CCTV-10 about the Han Dynasty and one of China's classic masterpieces, Romance of the Three Kingdoms （三国演义).

The crackdown on Google in China seems to have had little effect on its internet traffic. After dropping to 29th place on Friday, Google.cn returned to its original position of 21st place yesterday. While this is still much lower than Baidu (which has remained a stable position in the top 10), it's not bad for a site that's been consistently targeted by Chinese authorities - including campaigns complete with fallacious name-smearing interviews and fudged statistics, as well as a firewalling of several of its auxiliary services. Source: SCMP (paywalled)

Some enterprising cyber-Sherlock has used Google's Insight for Search service to discover that certain pornographic search terms experienced suspicious growth in the days prior to the the anti-Google CCTV reports.

"Over the course of time, received feedback from advertisers and readers that they cannot find copies of the newspaper. Then they heard that China Post was shipping the newspapers directly to recycling centers. The newspaper found out that the newspapers were trucked everyday from the post office branches to warehouses and then resold to recycling plants or stations. What is the economic basis? There are 50,000 copies shipped to China Post each day, 312 days per year. China Post pays 32 RMB per copy to the newspaper. Thus, each copy of the newspaper costs China Post only 32 RMB / 312 = 0.10 RMB. Meanwhile, the price for recycled paper is higher than that. So, there you have it." (From ESWN)

• Readings on 1999's "May 8th Tragedy" [The China Beat] The China Beat compiles readings on 1999's "May 8th Tragedy," when NATO missiles were fired into the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three PRC nationals and sparking protests all around the world from angry Chinese citizens. Included are two news accounts from the time - one by the BBC and one by CNN, a Salon.com piece by a Beida foreign student and two later analysis of the situation.
• China eyes regular Olympic show [Financial Times] "Less than a year after China hosted the Olympics, Beijing is planning to put its stunningly choreographed opening ceremony back on as a regular evening show at the “Bird’s Nest”, the main stadium built for the games... Zhang Hengli, vice-president of the National Stadium Company that now runs the Bird’s Nest, said: “We want to put on a regular evening show like the opening ceremony. But that will take longer to realise [than other performances in the works for the stadium] because it requires a huge amount of money. We need to find an investor and deal with potential issues of intellectual property of the International Olympic Committee.”"
• Communists Can’t Outspend Capitalists as China Jobless Increase [Bloomberg] "Demand for work is so high that 5,000 students jostled at a Shanghai employment fair in March for 400 jobs available in the funeral industry. One woman with a management degree applied for a position as a mortician’s assistant to “make up the faces of the dead,” state media reported. The attraction: It paid 4,000 yuan ($585) a month, equal to what she might have earned in an office job two years ago."

Well, would you look at that! The iconic CCTV building (whose neighbor, we all remember, burned up earlier this year) has appeared in The Simpsons as Milhouse's school project. "Big Hemmorhoids" now has equal billing as the Westminster Abbey and the Taj Mahal. Hurrah! If you want to check it out, here's the entire episode below. The CCTV building shows up at the 18:08 mark.

Multimedia enterprise China Green has been using some very well produced short films to document China's ongoing environmental issues. In this one, they take a look at Sohota Electric, a small Guangdong firm that has been making a big profit helping the country's various giants (including CCTV) retrofit their offices to become energy efficient. Considering that reports by China’s Ministry of Construction have deemed all buildings constructed before 2000 energy inefficient, it looks like Sohota will have a lot of work on their hands in the near future.

Caijing has a spectacular article looking at some of the troubles still shrouding the CCTV fire from last month, and they don't all have to do with the destroyed building. The blaze that gutted the TVCC building on February 9 may have also uncovered questionable financial deals made by high-level CCTV executives.

Even as the dust settles over last week's Academy Awards, anti-censorship advocates and gay activists across Asia continue to lambast their local television stations for the censorship of two 'Milk' acceptance speeches — one made by Sean Penn, winner of the Best Actor award, and the other by Dustin Lance Black, who picked up the award for Best Original Screenplay. Both speeches were heavily censored in 53 countries all over Asia from India to Singapore and Hong Kong.

Remember the government's proposed 45 billion yuan effort to ensure that the rest of the world sees a media more aligned with what the central politico wants it to see? It's started!

Ready?

According to the twitter grapevine (@zhongnanhai), CCTV might be using its recent disaster to cut down on the little benefits that come with office life. It's allegedly removed water coolers, mini-fridges, humidifiers and microwaves in the building inan attempt to prevent fires. Are the staff bonuses (adorably named the "Cultural and Ideological Progress Bonus," by the way) also a victim of the burning of TVCC?

12 people have been detained by Beijing police over the illegal fireworks that allegedly burned up the TVCC complex. Four CCTV staff members and the eight employees connected with the company hired to fire off the fireworks display have been detained for their suspected roles in causing the fire. CCTV said the fireworks had been powerful enough to require a special permit, but the broadcaster had not applied for one and deliberately ignored police safety warnings. Source: AP

Of no surprise to most people, the Baidu scandal has caused the search engine to lose some of its massive lead over Google in the Chinese market. While the company says its taken steps to correct the problems underscored by a CCTV expose, and U.S. investors are confident that Google won't ever win the race in this country, the numbers are still enough to make Baidu sweat a little. Google's share of the local online ad market rose 4.4% to 27.8% from the prior year. Baidu's rise was smaller, at 2.9% during the same period. Meanwhile, 4Q Internet traffic levels shrunk at Baidu, but gained at Google. Source: Bloomberg

If you were jam packed into Glamour Bar with 600 other people earlier this morning, watching President Barack Obama being sworn in, you might have been a little too dizzy with euphoria (and possibly heatstroke) to notice particular segments of his 18-minute inauguration address -- specifically, ones that likely caused the head honchos in Beijing to collectively cringe.

Tibetan lawmakers have designated March 28 as an annual "Serfs Emancipation Day" to mark the liberation of about one million serfs in the region and the end of what the Chinese government says was a system of feudal oppression 50 years ago. This CCTV report carries the official party line of what life in pre-Liberation Tibet looked like for serfs. It portrays them as having suffered immensely under a theocratic system and the despotic rule of lamas and aristocrats, and how they were often subjected to judicial mutilation such as the gouging out of eyes, and the cutting off of hands or feet.

So apparently the controversies in international media this summer over China and the Olympics came as a bit of a shock to the Chinese people. While the government's retained tight control over its own media, it's been less able to harmonize those pesky news outlets abroad. Not one to take perceived insults to its national image lying down, Beijing is now throwing RMB 45 billion into targeting global audiences.

CCTV's new year gala this year was presented in French, Spanish, English and Chinese. Top temples around China, including Fuzhou's Gu Shan Yong Quan Si, Mount Emei's Baoguo Si, Sanya's Nanshan Si, Suzhou's Hanshan Si, and Luoyang's Baima Si, rang in the new year by chiming their bells simultaneously.

WARNING: This video contains graphic images that may not be suitable for everyone.