Results tagged “riotinto”

It seems that the Chinese government was just getting started when it arrested employees from Rio Tinto this Summer. The newest company in the hot seat is Coca-Cola, which had an ex-employee arrested by the Shanghai police over corruption charges this weekend.

• Chinese sex toy market explodes [Sydney Morning Herald] "VIDEO: Chinese sex toy manufacturer, Sweet Secret, trains sales staff ahead of the opening of its first Beijing store."
• More Chinese Astronauts Prefer Volvos [Wired] "Four pioneers in Chinese space exploration have made it their mission to purchase Volvo S80L sedans. That’s one small step for man, one giant sedan for the garage. After returning safely from the Shenzhou 7 space mission, taikonauts Yang Liwei, Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng purchased matching luxury cars. According to Volvo Cars China, the quartet decided on the Chinese-exclusive S80L for three reasons: the car is safe, built locally, and the “brand image expresses premiumness and is not ostentatious.”"
• Don't Mess With China's Kids [Forbes] "Given China's habit of punishing individuals who protest against the government, it takes a lot of courage-or rage-for comrades to come forward. What gets Chinese people out in the streets demonstrating every time? Forcing parents to abide by a one-child policy, and then letting someone kill the one child to save a buck."

• China earthquake activist on trial [AFP] "A Chinese activist who was investigating whether shoddy construction caused school collapses in last year's massive Sichuan earthquake went on trial for subversion, his lawyer said. Environmental activist and writer Tan Zuoren, who was charged with "inciting subversion of state power," is accused of defaming the ruling Communist Party and the government over their handling of the Tiananmen crackdown on pro-democracy protestors in 1989. Mr Tan's brief trial in Chengdu, capital of southwest Sichuan province, ended without a verdict, Pu Zhiqiang, one of his two lawyers, said."
• Chinese police detain supporters of quake critic [AP] "A high-profile Chinese government critic said he and 11 others were detained by police in a hotel Wednesday to prevent them from attending the trial of an activist who investigated the deaths of thousands of schoolchildren in last year's earthquake. Avant-garde artist Ai Weiwei said police in the southwestern city of Chengdu also roughed up him and one of the other supporters who had traveled to the city to try to attend the trial of Tan Zuoren, an activist charged with subversion. The charges Tan faces appear to be linked to his quake investigation as well as essays he wrote about the 1989 student-led demonstrations in Tiananmen Square that ended in a deadly military crackdown. Beijing routinely uses the charge of subversion to imprison dissidents for years."
• Murder at the 'reboot' camps [China Daily] "Deng Senshan had never skipped school, never been diagnosed with a mental illness and, according to his family, surfed the Web only on weekends. Yet on Aug 1, the 15-year-old was admitted to a rehab camp for Internet addiction (IA), where, after being ordered to run 5 km as part of his "treatment", he was beaten to death by counselors."

• 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."

• Former Beijing airport boss executed in China [AP] "The former head of Beijing airport's management company was executed Friday following his conviction on corruption charges, state media reported. An intermediate court found 60-year-old Li Peiying guilty in February of accepting almost $4 million in bribes and embezzling about $12 million in public funds over the past 14 years, the Xinhua News Agency said."
• Australia Plans to Make Arrangements for Second Hu China Visit [Bloomberg] "Australia will soon be making arrangements for a second consular visit with Rio Tinto Group executive Stern Hu, detained in China for allegedly stealing state secrets, a government spokeswoman said. 'According to the consular agreement, visits must take place at least once per month,' a spokeswoman for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, who asked not to be named, said today in an e-mailed statement."
• Uighur unrest shows China's failures - Dalai Lama [Reuters] "Ethnic riots in northwest China have exposed the failings of Beijing's minority policies, and a more "realistic" stance toward Tibetans and others could emerge within a decade, the Dalai Lama said on Thursday. The Tibetan spiritual leader said the Uighur unrest in Xinjiang province in July, in which 197 people died according to the official death toll, showed the need for the Chinese Communist Party to rethink its approach."

• Washington Post lies [China Daily] "How can the Washington Post choose to project the good being done by the Chinese government for the Uygur ethnic group to convey the exact opposite? It must be an obsession to ensure that every report about Xinjiang after the Urumqi violence in early July should be an attack on the Chinese government and its policy. How else can such groundless reporting and accusations be explained?"
• China says Falun Gong ban 'works' [BBC] "A Chinese official says the country has been successful in efforts to crack down on the spiritual movement Falun Gong, 10 years after it was banned. Li Anping, from the China Anti-Cult Association, told a national newspaper that people now realised the true nature of the movement. But Falun Gong still exists, and has organised protest events outside China to mark the anniversary."
• Amazing Stat: California Uses More Gas than China [Wired] "Given all the news coverage about the rise of the Chinese economy, you could be forgiven for thinking that the world’s most populous country is hogging all the world’s resources, while the developed nations are fighting for scraps. But, at least with transportation fuel, you’d be wrong. California alone uses more gasoline than any country in the world (except the US as a whole, of course). That means California’s 20 billion gallon gasoline and diesel habit is greater than China’s! (Or Russia’s. Or India’s. Or Brazil’s. Or Germany’s.)"

• Why China Can't Create Brands [Newsweek] "China is famous as the factory to the world, but even its best companies enjoy little if any fame. That paradox has become a vexing problem for China's leaders. The nation is now too rich to continue growing at a double-digit pace by simply putting more peasants to work in factories, and then underselling its Western, Japanese, and South Korean competition. The job of making cheap clothes, toys, and electronics is moving on to even cheaper labor markets, like Vietnam. In a March report, Premier Wen Jiabao called for China to create companies that can innovate and churn out "brand-name export products"—meaning companies with reputations for quality, innovation, and service so strong that customers are willing to pay a premium for their products."
• Kazakh Uighurs hold mass protest [AP] " More than 5,000 ethnic Uighurs rallied in Kazakhstan's largest city on Sunday to protest China's use of deadly force to quash Uighur protests this month. The show of solidarity was the largest in any of the former Soviet republics — home to a half-million Uighurs — since the July 5 violence in Xinjang that authorities say claimed almost 200 lives."
• Caution urged in bids for US Big Three [China Daily] "As the ongoing financial crisis pressures Western automakers to consider selling some of their assets, Chinese vehicle producers are seeing more opportunities to enter the global market through overseas acquisitions. However, unlike the positive responses to purchases such as China's Lenovo acquiring IBM's PC business in 2004, bidding for assets from ailing Big Three automakers has attracted more criticism."

• Aw, so Harry Potter can't seem to cast a spell over Shanghai, earning barely half of what Transformers II: Revenge of the Fallen did. Is it because we didn't organize a movie night around this opening? [Shanghai Daily]
• Reacting to the Stern Hu detained in Shanghai saga, Rio Tinto is now pulling ALL of its foreign staff out of China. Allegedly. [CNN]
• To battle potential traffic jams, Shanghai will be employing an even-odd license plate system for the Expo like Beijing did for the Olympics. [Xinhua]

• NKorea's Kim Jong Il looks OK in new photographs [AP] "North Korea released new photographs of Kim Jong Il touring a factory following reports earlier this week that the 67-year-old leader has pancreatic cancer and less than five years to live. Wearing sunglasses and a short-sleeved shirt, Kim appeared generally OK in the images released Tuesday night — thin but no worse than in other recent photographs. He has grown frailer over the past year after reportedly suffering a stroke last summer."
• How China Wins and Loses Xinjiang [Foreign Policy] "The government's crackdown on the Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority group that has long chafed under Beijing's rule, was nasty, brutish, and short. Overnight curfews were imposed. Thousands of police officers dispersed. President Hu Jintao left the G-8 summit in Europe to focus on putting out fires at home. But not all aspects of China's policies toward Uighurs and other minorities are characterized by such precision."
• Something’s Rotten in Chinese Steel Industry [NYT Dealbook] "Long before four employees of the Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto were detained in Shanghai last week on suspicion of stealing state secrets, people working in China’s steel industry were complaining about bribery, deceit and a system turned rotten, The New York Times’s David Barboza writes."

• Xinjiang Info-War [RConversation] "Exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer mistakenly made prominent use in interviews of a photo that turned out to be from riots in Shishou, Hubei province, in late June. Roland Soong at ESWN has a full account of how the photo came to be misconstrued and misused. Apparently, the source of the error was Reuters, who had sourced the photo from Twitter and put it out on the wire before recalling it."
• China's Urumqi tense after police shooting [AFP] "URUMQI - A mosque was closed and many businesses were shuttered near where police shot dead two Muslim Uighurs, as ethnic tensions simmered in China's restive Urumqi city."
• Drawing Critics, China Seeks to Dominate in Renewable Energy [NewYorkTimes] "BEIJING - When the United States’ top energy and commerce officials arrive in China on Tuesday, they will land in the middle of a building storm over China’s protectionist tactics to become the world’s leader in renewable energy."

The mysterious detainment of four employees from Ozzie mining giant Rio Tinto on Sunday was finally explained today, when the Chinese government confirmed today that Stern Hu, GM of Rio Tinto's Shanghai office, and three of his underlings were alleged to have committed espionage and stolen state secrets.

• An autopsy has been ordered on the bus driver who swerved into oncoming traffic on the Yangpu Bridge last week, killing three and injuring 27. [Shanghai Daily]
• Four employees of global mining giant Rio Tinto have been mysteriously detained for questioning by Chinese authorities. Nobody is sure why or how to reach them. [Reuters]
• The Financial Times talks about the importance of the Peace Hotel's restoration on the Bund. [FT]