Podcasts about hunan province

Welcome to China Compass on the Fight Laugh Feast Network! I'm your China travel guide, Missionary Ben. You can follow me on X (@chinaadventures) where I post daily reminders to pray for China (PrayforChina.us). You can also email me with any questions or comments @ contact at PrayforChina dot us. You can also find easy links to everything we are involved in @ PrayGiveGo.us. Summary: First, I take a few minutes to look at China’s current struggles (1:30). Then I take another look at Jimmy Carter’s China legacy (8:03). Next I talk about my first true departure for China 22 years ago this week, and what I thought I was getting into by moving to China for a “year” (26:08). Lastly, I discuss Borden’s adventures in Cairo in January of 1913 (39:11) and William Milne’s Journals from 200+ years ago (46:00). China’s Economic Struggles https://finance.yahoo.com/news/beijing-subsidizing-everything-microwaves-dishwashers-071203328.html Interview with President Carter re: China Legacy https://www.cartercenter.org/news/features/p/china/president-carter-on-normalizing-relations-with-china.html The Millionaire Missionary in Cairo (1913) BordenofYale.com https://chinacall.substack.com/p/borden-of-yale-riots-debates-and The Memoirs of William Milne (200th Anniversary Edition) https://a.co/d/bALLtAf Pray for China: Jan 11 - Pray for Xiangtan Prefecture in south-central China's mountainous Hunan Province, and the homeland of Mao Zedong (childhood home pictured). Hunan literally translates to “south of the lake” and is paired with both Indiana and Ohio for prayer: www.PrayforChina.us For more info… https://pubtv.flfnetwork.com/tabs/audio/podcasts/30293/episodes/22 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangtan https://www.asiaharvest.org/china-resources/hunan #prayforchina

Welcome to China Compass on the Fight Laugh Feast Network! I'm your China travel guide, Missionary Ben. You can follow me on X (@chinaadventures) where I post daily reminders to pray for China (PrayforChina.us). You can also email me with any questions or comments @ contact at PrayforChina dot us. You can also find easy links to everything we are involved in @ PrayGiveGo.us. Summary: First, I take a few minutes to look at China’s current struggles (1:30). Then I take another look at Jimmy Carter’s China legacy (8:03). Next I talk about my first true departure for China 22 years ago this week, and what I thought I was getting into by moving to China for a “year” (26:08). Lastly, I discuss Borden’s adventures in Cairo in January of 1913 (39:11) and William Milne’s Journals from 200+ years ago (46:00). China’s Economic Struggles https://finance.yahoo.com/news/beijing-subsidizing-everything-microwaves-dishwashers-071203328.html Interview with President Carter re: China Legacy https://www.cartercenter.org/news/features/p/china/president-carter-on-normalizing-relations-with-china.html The Millionaire Missionary in Cairo (1913) BordenofYale.com https://chinacall.substack.com/p/borden-of-yale-riots-debates-and The Memoirs of William Milne (200th Anniversary Edition) https://a.co/d/bALLtAf Pray for China: Jan 11 - Pray for Xiangtan Prefecture in south-central China's mountainous Hunan Province, and the homeland of Mao Zedong (childhood home pictured). Hunan literally translates to “south of the lake” and is paired with both Indiana and Ohio for prayer: www.PrayforChina.us For more info… https://pubtv.flfnetwork.com/tabs/audio/podcasts/30293/episodes/22 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangtan https://www.asiaharvest.org/china-resources/hunan #prayforchina

On the season finale of Season 2 our guest is the Chinese Ceramic Sculptor Lirong Luo.  Lirong says: "Most important for me is to create my artwork freely and show people what I am ready to show and what is interesting for me to show the world.”  Lirong's sculptural work is influenced by Renaissance and Baroque techniques, an interest she developed while studying art in Beijing under the tutelage of sculptor Wang Du. This influence is evident in the life-like quality and grace of her figures, often women, captured in motion. Their poses are elegant, elongating their bodies, and Lirong's attention to detail in skin folds and garment drapery imbues them with a sense of vitality. The dresses and garments of her sculptures often appear windswept, creating a compelling dichotomy between realism and a fantastical element. But her early life was not easy. Growing up in a small village in China, Lirong's path was filled with hard work and a determination to prove without anyone to show her the way that a Chinese woman could become a successful international artist. In this episode, she shares her story of resilience, her vision and artistic process, and how she created her own path in the art world. Lirong was born in the Hunan Province in 1980. Her parents, Huaifu Luo and Aiyu Guo are both farmers. She has a brother, Liping Luo. In 1998, Lirong entered the Changsha Academy of Arts in Changsha, Hunan, and from 2000-2005 she studied sculpture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing graduating with honors. Lirong met her future husband the Belgian sculptor Arnaud Laroche while they were students together and once Lirong graduated the couple decided to move to Europe. They first lived in Paris where Lirong worked in a chocolate factory before moving to Belgium. It was here that she established a studio and in 2014 held her first exhibition. By 2017 Lirong had hit the big time and now her work can be seen in galleries in France and Belgium. Lirong lives in Beersel, Belgium with her husband Arnaud Laroche and their daughters Olivia and Maya.Lirong's links: Instagram: @luo_li_rong_arthttps://www.instagram.com/luo_li_rong_art/?hl=enFacebook:  LUO Li Ronghttps://www.facebook.com/p/LUO-LI-RONG-100044201991035/ Lirong's favorite female artists:Camille ClaudelKiki SmithBeth Cavener Host: Chris StaffordProduced by Hollowell StudiosFollow @theaartpodcast on InstagramAART on FacebookEmail: hollowellstudios@gmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/wisp--4769409/support.

We're experimenting and would love to hear from you!In today's episode of Discover Daily, we explore OpenAI's release of Sora, their new text-to-video generation tool that's creating waves in the creative industry. The system, capable of producing 60-second videos from text descriptions, has already influenced major industry decisions, including Tyler Perry's pause on an $800 million studio expansion. Available to ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers, Sora enters a competitive market alongside established players like Runway and Kuaishou.We also cover Bitcoin's historic milestone of surpassing $100,000, trading at $103,555 - a 140% increase since January. This surge is driven by spot Bitcoin ETF approvals attracting billions from institutional investors like BlackRock and Fidelity. Federal Reserve Chairman Powell's repositioning of Bitcoin as a gold competitor rather than a dollar alternative marks a significant shift in perspective, while countries like El Salvador report substantial profits from their Bitcoin adoption.The episode culminates with China's discovery of what could be the world's largest gold deposit in the Wangu goldfield of Hunan Province. This massive find contains 40 gold ore veins across 2 square kilometers, with exceptional ore quality averaging 8.13 grams per ton - far exceeding the global average. The discovery's implications extend beyond China, potentially reshaping global precious metals markets and mining practices.From Perplexity's Discover Feed: https://www.perplexity.ai/page/openai-s-sora-finally-released-1NvA4n9_QfaAMKBHmpq.Mwhttps://www.perplexity.ai/page/bitcoin-hits-100k-dKQP9kjCSm.vbH4n4pbynghttps://www.perplexity.ai/page/world-s-largest-gold-deposit-f-AmSFIdazQsyc3qQtjiTH.wPerplexity is the fastest and most powerful way to search the web. Perplexity crawls the web and curates the most relevant and up-to-date sources (from academic papers to Reddit threads) to create the perfect response to any question or topic you're interested in. Take the world's knowledge with you anywhere. Available on iOS and Android Join our growing Discord community for the latest updates and exclusive content. Follow us on: Instagram Threads X (Twitter) YouTube Linkedin

On the season finale of Season 2 our guest is the Chinese Sculptor Lirong Luo.  Lirong says: "Most important for me is to create my artwork freely and show people what I am ready to show and what is interesting for me to show the world.”  Lirong's sculptural work is influenced by Renaissance and Baroque techniques, an interest she developed while studying art in Beijing under the tutelage of sculptor Wang Du. This influence is evident in the life-like quality and grace of her figures, often women, captured in motion. Their poses are elegant, elongating their bodies, and Lirong's attention to detail in skin folds and garment drapery imbues them with a sense of vitality. The dresses and garments of her sculptures often appear windswept, creating a compelling dichotomy between realism and a fantastical element. But her early life was not easy. Growing up in a small village in China, Lirong's path was filled with hard work and a determination to prove without anyone to show her the way that a Chinese woman could become a successful international artist. In this episode, she shares her story of resilience, her vision and artistic process, and how she created her own path in the art world. Lirong was born in the Hunan Province in 1980. Her parents, Huaifu Luo and Aiyu Guo are both farmers. She has a brother, Liping Luo. In 1998, Lirong entered the Changsha Academy of Arts in Changsha, Hunan, and from 2000-2005 she studied sculpture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing graduating with honors. Lirong met her future husband the Belgian sculptor Arnaud Laroche while they were students together and once Lirong graduated the couple decided to move to Europe. They first lived in Paris where Lirong worked in a chocolate factory before moving to Belgium. It was here that she established a studio and in 2014 held her first exhibition. By 2017 Lirong had hit the big time and now her work can be seen in galleries in France and Belgium. Lirong lives in Beersel, Belgium with her husband Arnaud Laroche and their daughters Olivia and Maya. Lirong's links:Instagram: @luo_li_rong_art https://www.instagram.com/luo_li_rong_art/?hl=enFacebook:  LUO Li Ronghttps://www.facebook.com/p/LUO-LI-RONG-100044201991035/Lirong's favorite female artists:Camille ClaudelKiki SmithBeth Cavener Host: Chris StaffordProduced by Hollowell StudiosFollow @theaartpodcast on InstagramEmail: hollowellstudios@gmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/aart--5814675/support.

Firebird Metals Ltd (ASX:FRB, OTC:FRBMF) managing director Peter Allen joins Proactive's Tylah Tully to discuss successful trials using a pilot-scale calcining rotary kiln at the Hunan Firebird Battery Technologies Plant, Hunan Province, China. The trials demonstrate significant energy savings, supporting Firebird's efforts in producing low-cost, high-purity manganese sulphate for lithium manganese iron phosphate (LMFP) batteries. The self-developed electrical rotary kiln showed a 70% reduction in energy consumption, using 80-100 kWh per tonne compared to more than 300 kWh for conventional kilns. This leads to cost reductions of approximately US$30 per tonne, or 5% of total production costs. The testing was conducted in partnership with Sunward, a Chinese rotary tunnel kiln producer, who co-funded the energy-saving calcining unit. The kiln, installed at the Jinshi High-Tech Industrial Park, is scalable and is expected to deliver further savings as production expands. Firebird aims to improve its cost profile while progressing towards full-scale production with potential for the kiln to be used in other industries. The company has begun designing higher temperature kilns for applications such as lithium spodumene processing and has initiated international patenting of its kiln technology. #Proactiveinvestors #FirebirdMetals #ASX #ManganeseSulphate #BatteryTech #EnergyEfficiency #RotaryKiln #CostReduction #SustainableMining #ChinaManufacturing #LMFPBatteries #PilotKiln #Sunward #CalciningTechnology #IndustrialProduction #BatteryMaterials #HighPurityManganese #MiningInnovation #MineralProcessing #KilnTechnology #LithiumSpodumene #PatentPending

Search and rescue efforts are underway after typhoon-induced rains lashed Zixing in Hunan Province in central China. Authorities say they have restored roads, electricity and communications in the city.

Authorities say they have evacuated over 3,800 people due to a dike breach in central China. The breach occurred in the Juanshui River in Hunan Province on Sunday evening.

Over seven thousand people have been evacuated to safe locations after a dike breach in Hunan Province. Officials say they will complete closing the dike breach in Dongting Lake on July 9.

Chinese authorities have dispatched a work team to Hunan Province to guide rescue efforts after a dike breach in the country's second-largest freshwater lake on Friday afternoon.

Rescue and relief work is underway after a dike breach occurred in central China's Hunan Province. Around five thousand people were affected, all of whom have been safely evacuated.

Firebird Metals Ltd (ASX:FRB; OTC:FRBMF) managing director Peter Allen joins Jonathan Jackson in the Proactive studio to discuss a development agreement with Zhongji Sunward Technology Co, Ltd (Sunward), a leading Chinese producer of rotary tunnel kilns. This agreement involves co-funding the design of Firebird's energy-saving calcining unit. The calcining technology, which is patent-pending, reportedly reduces energy usage by 80% and is intended to enhance Firebird's proposed Battery Grade High-Purity Manganese Sulphate Plant in Jinshi, Hunan Province, China. The agreement includes a 5% royalty payment to Firebird from Sunward on future sales revenue of the units, while allowing Firebird the right to partner with other manufacturers. Sunward will fund half the cost of a pilot plant for the calcining units, estimated at approximately US$200,000. They will also handle the engineering design and manufacturing. The pilot plant is expected to be completed within two months, with data from testing to inform the current project design. Allen stated that the agreement validated the company's work and highlighted the calibre of partners they were attracting in China. Firebird aims to use this collaboration to determine the commercial viability of its energy recycling system, which could significantly reduce operating costs in its manganese sulphate plant. Firebird remains focused on delivering energy-efficient improvements through its proprietary technologies, believing that the Energy-Saving Calcining Technology and 5th Generation Crystallization Technology will enable it to become a low-cost producer of high-purity manganese sulphate. #ProactiveInvestors #FirebirdMetals #ASX #FRB #OTC #FRBMF #ZhongjiSunward #CalciningTechnology #EnergyEfficiency #BatteryMaterials #ManganeseSulphate #China #Engineering #PilotPlant #Innovation #ManganeseProduction #SustainableTech #Mining #Minerals #TechnologyPartnership #CleanEnergy #invest #investing #investment #investor #stockmarket #stocks #stock #stockmarketnews

In the first installment of what will be a two-part feature, we'll talk about how Qi Baishi, a renowned Chinese painter of the 20th century, emerged from humble origins in central China's Hunan Province to become a master of traditional Chinese painting.

Firebird Metals Ltd (ASX:FRB) managing director Peter Allen sits down with Jonathan Jackson in the Proactive studio to discuss the company's visit to a large investor site visit in China, demonstrating significant progress and strategic advantages in the region. The primary focus was on Firebird's leading manganese sulphate team and their advancements in Jinshi, Hunan Province. Attendees toured the Pilot Plant and R&D centre for battery-grade manganese sulphate, the Jinshi Port and a proposed site for new processing facilities within the Jinshi High-Tech Industrial Park. Additionally, the visit included Canmax Technologies Co., Ltd's lithium hydroxide plant in Meishan, highlighting the project's strong local support and operational benefits in China. The company also revealed outcomes from a feasibility study conducted by Hunan Chemical Engineering Design Institute Co., Ltd., which supports Firebird's strategy to produce high-purity manganese sulphate. The study highlights the economic viability with low capital expenses of US$83.5 million and operational advantages due to local support and regulatory compliance. The planned plant has annual capacity for 50,000 tonnes of battery grade MnSO4 and 10,000 tonnes of Mn3O4. Significant progress has been made in areas such as equipment supplier due diligence, R&D and project permitting, aiming for completion by late Q3 2024. Additionally, Firebird is engaged in discussions with European customers and has initiated profit and capital repatriation processes supported by local authorities. Finally, the company has made further progress in the development of its Stage 1 Battery Grade Manganese Sulphate Plant in China, signing “critical” financing and construction agreements with the Jinshi Government, China Construction Bank (Jinshi division) and leading chemical engineering contractor China Chemical. #ProactiveInvestors #Firebird #ASX #InvestorVisit, #ManganeseSulphate, #Jinshi, #ChinaInvestment, #BatteryMaterials, #FeasibilityStudy, #HCEDI, #SustainableMining, #ElectricVehicle, #EV, #BatteryProduction, #LowCAPEX, #HighTechIndustrialPark, #LocalSupport, #ChineseRegulations, #MnSO4, #LithiumHydroxide, #CanmaxTechnologies, #EnvironmentalSustainability #invest #investing #investment #investor #stockmarket #stocks #stock #stockmarketnews

Hibernation is a pretty extreme biological process that shouldn't be undertaken lightly. Bearded dragons are one of many beasts that have it perfected, and in this episode we look at how. Species of the Bi-week is back with a new strange skinned snake. Become a Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/herphighlights Merch: https://www.redbubble.com/people/herphighlights/shop Full reference list available here: http://www.herphighlights.podbean.com Main Paper References: Capraro A, O'Meally D, Waters SA, Patel HR, Georges A, Waters PD. 2019. Waking the sleeping dragon: gene expression profiling reveals adaptive strategies of the hibernating reptile Pogona vitticeps. BMC Genomics 20:460. DOI: 10.1186/s12864-019-5750-x. Species of the Bi-Week: Li H, Zhu L-Q, Xiao B, Huang J, Wu S-W, Yang L-X, Zhang Z-Q, Mo X-Y. 2024. A new species of the genus Achalinus (Squamata, Xenodermatidae) from southwest Hunan Province, China. ZooKeys 1189:257–273. DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.1189.112784. Other Mentioned Papers/Studies: Natusch D, Lyons J, Mears L, Shine R. 2021. Biting off more than you can chew: Attempted predation on a human by a giant snake (Simalia amethistina). Austral Ecology 46:159–162. DOI: 10.1111/aec.12956. Editing and Music: Podcast edited by Alex – https://www.fiverr.com/alexanderroses Intro/outro – Treehouse by Ed Nelson Species Bi-week theme – Michael Timothy Other Music – The Passion HiFi, https://www.thepassionhifi.com

The Chinese president has stressed the importance of farmers and food security amid his tour of Hunan Province in central China(01:05).The Third International Forum on Democracy has kicked off in Beijing with hundreds of delegates from 70 countries and regions(08:36). Israel has agreed to send a delegation to the US to discuss the Middle East country's planned invasion of Rafah(19:31).

①President Xi Jinping inspects Hunan Province. What key messages does the visit send out? (00:42)②The third International Forum on Democracy kicks off in Beijing. (12:43)③China has launched a new relay satellite to provide Earth-Moon communications services. How does that pave the way for China's future lunar missions? (24:33)④Netanyahu has renewed his pledge to attack Rafah despite Biden's warning. Is there a widening rift between Israel and the US over the war in Gaza? (33:22)⑤Apple is in talks to let Google Gemini power iPhone AI features. (41:26)

In this episode of The A to Z English Podcast, Jack reads three amazing stories from China.The Longest Skywalk in the World - Zhangjiajie Glass Bridge:In August 2016, China opened the Zhangjiajie Glass Bridge, the world's longest and highest glass-bottomed skywalk. This architectural marvel is located in the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in Hunan Province. The bridge spans about 430 meters (1,410 feet) and is suspended at a height of 300 meters (984 feet) above the stunning Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon. It offers breathtaking views of the surrounding landscape, making it a popular tourist attraction for thrill-seekers and nature enthusiasts from around the world.The Panda Reintroduction Program:China has made significant efforts to conserve one of its most iconic and endangered species, the giant panda. Through dedicated conservation initiatives, such as the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, scientists and conservationists have worked to increase the panda population. One notable success story is the reintroduction of captive-born pandas into the wild. In 2018, a captive-born female panda named "Qing Qing" was successfully released into the Liziping Nature Reserve in Sichuan Province, marking a significant milestone in the efforts to protect and reintroduce pandas into their natural habitats.The Rise of China's High-Speed Rail Network:China's high-speed rail network is a testament to the country's rapid development and technological advancements. Over the past few decades, China has invested heavily in constructing an extensive and efficient high-speed rail system that connects major cities across the country. One remarkable example is the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway, which began operation in 2011. This railway covers a distance of over 1,300 kilometers (about 807 miles) and allows passengers to travel between Beijing and Shanghai in just a few hours. The network has not only transformed the way people travel but also played a crucial role in boosting economic growth and regional integration in China.Email: atozenglishpodcast@gmail.comPodcast Website: https://atozenglishpodcast.com/a-to-z-quick-tok-12-3-amazing-stories-from-china/Social Media:Threadshttps://threads.com/invitation/34520051596/RLLHXJPPFMTFXUHE5NSUT6OLMUSSLEJBUI227Z6DXCO2XVBOWQCK7N4UA to Z Facebook Page:https://www.facebook.com/theatozenglishpodcastTik Tok:@atozenglish1Instagram:@atozenglish22Twitter:@atozenglish22Check out the Free Online English Lessons YouTube channel:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCds7JR-5dbarBfas4Ve4h8ADonate to the show: https://app.redcircle.com/shows/9472af5c-8580-45e1-b0dd-ff211db08a90/donationsRobin and Jack started a new You Tube channel called English Word Master. You can check it out here:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2aXaXaMY4P2VhVaEre5w7ABecome a member of Podchaser and leave a positive review!https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-a-to-z-english-podcast-4779670Learn English by listening to our podcast. Each lesson has an interesting topic that will help you improve your English listening skills. You can also comment on the episodes in our Whatsapp group or send emails to our email address atozenglishpodcast@gmail.com.Join our WhatsApp group here: https://forms.gle/zKCS8y1t9jwv2KTn7Check out Jack's course books here:http://www.darakwon.co.kr/books/listProduct.asp?pc_id_2=7&pc_id_3=29Intro/Outro Music: Daybird by Broke for Freehttps://freemusicarchive.org/music/Broke_For_Free/Directionless_EP/Broke_For_Free_-_Directionless_EP_-_03_Day_Bird/https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eaters/simian-samba/audrey-horne/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-a-to-z-english-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

关注公众号【Albert英语研习社】，0元领取《3天英语思维风暴营》直播大课，Albert带你巧用英语思维，听说读写译轻松进阶！China is a country known for its entrepreneurial spirit and innovative business practices. From traditional trades to modern ventures, Chinese people have continually found out-of-the-box approaches that have captured domestic and international attention. Vendors in China's Hunan Province have found an unusual way to make money: by stir-frying pebbles with ingredients like chili, garlic, purple perilla, and rosemary. Customers can suck on them to taste the flavors and reuse them later for other dishes. 周邦琴Albert●没有名牌大学背景，没有英语专业背景●没有国外留学经历，没有英语生活环境●22岁成为500强公司英文讲师，录音素材全球员工使用●自学成为同声传译，25岁为瑞士总统翻译

Wisconsin Watch reporter Zhen Wang found evidence that prisoners in China's central Hunan Province were forced to make Milwaukee Tool-branded work gloves under grueling conditions, earning pennies each day. A supplier for Milwaukee Tool subcontracted work to the prison, two former prisoners said in separate interviews conducted in Mandarin. A self-identified salesperson of the supplier told Wang it manufactured the majority of Milwaukee Tool's work gloves. And regulatory filings confirm that the company was contracted to manufacture “Performance Gloves” for a subsidiary of Milwaukee Tool's parent company. Originally published on May 4th, 2023.

Our partners inside of China recently held a secret meeting in Hunan Province. Some leaders from one of the main networks of the underground church came together to discuss the things they've seen in the last 3 years, and what they will do going forward. Out of this meeting they said there is one thing that they have need of... Bibles.

Zhangjiajie, China--(Newsfile Corp. - November 18, 2022) - On November 19th and 20th, the first Hunan Tourism Development Conference will be held in Zhangjiajie, the famed tourist city for uniquely wonderful landscapes. The event is inaugurated to shine the spotlight on Hunan Province, China with international attention.The First Hunan Tourism Development Conference Ready to Start on Nov. 19To "set examples to follow" and "boost development through event organization", Hunan has planned to integrate resources to facilitate the "four aspects of achieving faster development", i.e. infrastructure construction, overall environmental improvement, integrated growth of industries, as well as economic and social progress in cities, prefectures, counties, and districts in the province with whose efforts the conference is going to be successfully launched, and it is expected to advance, economically and socially, the high-quality development of the whole province, according to the Organizing Committee of Hunan Tourism Development Conference.By holding the conference, Hunan will be in full swing to seize the opportunities to bring in investment via the platform which the event will provide. In the whole province, 302 key investment promotion projects that have been selected will ask for a total investment of 529.6 billion yuan. In early July this year, the Xiangxi prefecture has taken the lead in holding a tourism development conference, during which 54 project contracts were signed, attracting 74.303 billion yuan of investment.The First Hunan Tourism Development Conference Ready to Start on Nov. 19To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7829/144777_92281a34a481cb38_002full.jpgThe projects are anticipated to drive tourist industrial updates and service enhancement in main areas such as folk-custom, camping, road trips, wellness retreats, sports, and leisure. Through the demonstration of a pattern of "+tourism", a synergy for innovative development will be created between multiple fields, to better satisfy the needs of tourists and accelerate the recovery of the market.With the goal of "thriving a place with an event", Hunan has launched a series of activities, for example, culture and tourism promotions, project observation programs, and tourism industry development promotions, showing ambition and abilities to the country and even the globe to make itself a world-level tourist destination, which also displays the province's positive response to the Global Development Initiative in the current stage of pursuing high-quality development in China.Contact:Company Name: The Organizing Committee of The First Tourism Development Conference of Hunan ProvinceContact Person: Jason ZouP

Hello Passengers! Thanks for listening! Become a First Class Passenger! Get all of the bonuses, support the show and Save The Music Foundation! www.patreon.com/accidentaldads   Units 731 is a hardcore metal band formed in Pittsburgh, PA, in 2005. The band combines death metal, hardcore, and slam to create a heavy and chaotic sound for which Pittsburgh bands are notable. Influences include Dying Fetus, All Out War, Irate, and Built Upon Frustration. Ok, wait… wrong notes. Um… ok, here it is. The Unit 731 we're here to talk about is short for Manshu Detachment 731. It was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that participated in lethal human experimentation and the production of biological weapons during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II. Unit 731 was based in the Pingfang district of Harbin, the largest city in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. Manchukuo's government was dissolved in 1945 after the surrender of Imperial Japan at the end of World War II. The territories claimed by Manchukuo were first seized in the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August 1945 and then formally transferred to the Chinese administration in the following year.  For those of you wondering, "what in the Jim Henson hell is a puppet state," well, according to Wikipedia, a puppet state "is a state that is legally recognized as independent but, in fact, completely dependent upon an outside power and subject to its orders. Puppet states have nominal sovereignty, but a foreign power effectively exercises control through financial interests and economic or military support. The United States also had some puppet states during the Cold War: Cuba (United States), (before 1959) Guatemala (United States), (until 1991) South Korea A.K.A. United States Army Military Government in Korea (United States), (Until 1948) The Republic of Vietnam A.K.A. South Vietnam (United States), (Until 1975) Japan A.K.A. Allied Occupation of Japan (United States), (Until 1952) Some of the most infamous war crimes committed by the Japanese military forces were caused by this Unit. Internally dehumanized and referred to as "logs," humans were regularly used in Unit 731 testing.    Some atrocious experiments included: disease injections, controlled dehydration, hypobaric chamber experiments, biological weapons testing, vivisection, amputation, and weapons testing. Babies, children, and pregnant women were among the victims. Although the victims were from various countries, the majority were Chinese. Additionally, Unit 731 created biological weapons employed in regions of China, including Chinese cities and towns, water supplies, and farms, that were not held by Japanese soldiers.    Up to 500,000 people are thought to have been murdered by Unit 731 and its related activities. It was called "The Kwantung Army's Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department." Unit 731 was first established by the Kenpeitai military police of the Empire of Japan. General Shiro Ishii, a combat medic officer in the Kwantung Army, took control and oversaw the unit until the war's conclusion. Ishii and his crew used the facility, constructed in 1935 to replace the Zhongma Fortress, to increase their capabilities.    Up to the end of the war in 1945, the Japanese government generously supported the initiative. Facilities for the manufacturing, testing, deployment and storage of biological weapons were controlled by Unit 731 and the other units of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department. While researchers from Unit 731 detained by Soviet troops were convicted in the Khabarovsk war crime trials in December 1949, those seized by American forces were secretly granted immunity in exchange for the information obtained during their human experimentation.    As if we needed more bullshit to make us question the tactics of the U.S. government, The U.S. quelled the talk of the human experiments and paid the accused of doing it an actual salary. So then, similar to what they did with German researchers during Operation Paperclip, the Americans siphoned and took their knowledge of and expertise with bioweapons for use in their own program for biological warfare. Japan started its biological weapons program in the 1930s, partly because biological weapons were banned by the Geneva Convention of 1925; they reasoned that the ban verified its effectiveness as a weapon.    This begs the question, does this type of government appropriation, paying off and hiring those guilty of explicit acts on humans to use their knowledge to create our own versions of what they committed, considered an act "for the greater good?" Does allowing these turds' immunity to extract their heinous experience worth it?   Japan's occupation of Manchuria began in 1931 after the Japanese invasion. Japan decided to build Unit 731 in Manchuria because the occupation not only gave the Japanese advantage of separating the research station from their island but also gave them access to as many Chinese individuals as they wanted for use as human experimental subjects. They viewed the Chinese as no-cost research subjects and hoped they could use this advantage to lead the world in biological warfare. Most research subjects were Chinese, but many were of different nationalities.    Sound familiar? Maybe a precursor to what a bunch of mind fucked Nazis attempted AND SUCCEEDED IN DOING to so many Jews and Jewish sympathizers?    In 1932, Surgeon General Shirō Ishii, chief medical officer of the Imperial Japanese Army and protégé of Army Minister Sadao Araki, was placed in command of the Army Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory (AEPRL). Ishii organized a secret research group, the "Tōgō Unit," for chemical and biological experimentation in Manchuria. Ishii proposed the creation of a Japanese biological and chemical research unit in 1930, after a two-year study trip abroad, because Western powers were developing their own programs. Colonel Chikahiko Koizumi, who eventually served as Japan's Health Minister from 1941 to 1945, was one of Ishii's most fierce supporters inside the Army. In 1915, during World War I, Koizumi and other Imperial Japanese Army officers were inspired by the Germans' successful use of chlorine gas at the Second Battle of Ypres (EEPRUH), in which the Allies suffered 5,000 fatalities and 15,000 injuries as a result of the chemical attack. As a result, they joined a covert poison gas research committee. As a result, unit Togo was started in the Zhongma Fortress, a prison/experimentation camp in Beiyinhe, a hamlet on the South Manchuria Railway 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Harbin.    To start the tests on those in good health, prisoners were often well-fed on a diet of rice or wheat, meat, fish, and perhaps even wine. The inmates were then starved of food and drink and had their blood drained over many days. Finally, it was noted that their health was declining. Shocker.  Some were vivisected as well. For those who don't watch or listen to disturbing documentaries, vivisection is surgery conducted for experimental purposes on a living organism, typically animals with a central nervous system, to view living internal structures. Others had been purposefully exposed to the plague bacterium and other pathogens. Ishii had to close down Zhongma Fortress due to a jailbreak in the fall of 1934 that jeopardized the facility's secret and an explosion in 1935 that was thought to be sabotage. Then he was given permission to relocate to Pingfang, which is 24 km (15 mi) south of Harbin, to set up a new, much larger facility.  Emperor Hirohito signed a decree in 1936 approving the unit's growth and its incorporation as the Epidemic Prevention Department into the Kwantung Army. It had bases at Hsinking and was split into the "Ishii Unit" and "Wakamatsu Unit." The units were collectively referred to as the "Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army" from August 1940 onward. Hirohito's younger brother, Prince Mikasa, toured the Unit 731 headquarters in China and wrote in his memoir that he watched films showing how Chinese prisoners were "made to march on the plains of Manchuria for poison gas experiments on humans." The decree also mandated the construction of a chemical warfare development unit, the Kwantung Army Technical Testing Department, and a biological warfare development unit, the Kwantung Army Military Horse Epidemic Prevention Workshop (later known as Manchuria Unit 100). (subsequently referred to as Manchuria Unit 516).    Sister chemical and biological warfare organizations known as Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Units were established in significant Chinese towns during the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. Unit 1855 in Beijing, Unit Ei 1644 in Nanjing, Unit 8604 in Guangzhou, and Unit 9420 in Singapore were among the detachments. Ishii's network, which at its height in 1939 had control over 10,000 people, was made up of all these organizations. In addition, Japanese medical practitioners and academics were drawn to Unit 731 by the opportunity to perform human experiments, which was highly unusual, and the Army's robust financial support.   Experiments   Human subjects were used in studies for a specific project with the codename Maruta. Test subjects were selected from the local populace and were referred to as "logs," as in the phrase "How many logs fell?" Since the facility's official cover story to local authorities was that it was a timber mill, the personnel first used the word as a joke. The initiative was internally known as "Holzklotz," which is German, meaning log, according to a junior uniformed civilian employee of the Imperial Japanese Army working in Unit 731. Nothing like dehumanizing the poor people you're experimenting on.   Another similarity was the cremation of the "sacrificed" participants' corpses. Additionally, Unit 731 researchers published some findings in peer-reviewed publications while posing as non-human primates termed "Manchurian monkeys" or "long-tailed monkeys" to do the research.   According to American historian Sheldon H. Harris:   "The Togo Unit employed gruesome tactics to secure specimens of select body organs. If Ishii or one of his co-workers wished to do research on the human brain, then they would order the guards to find them a useful sample. A prisoner would be taken from his cell. Guards would hold him while another guard would smash the victim's head open with an ax. His brain would be extracted off to the pathologist, and then to the crematorium for the usual disposal."   Nakagawa Yonezo, professor emeritus at Osaka University, studied at Kyoto University during the war. While there, he watched footage of human experiments and executions from Unit 731. He later testified about the "playfulness of the experimenters:"   'Some of the experiments had nothing to do with advancing the capability of germ warfare, or of medicine. There is such a thing as professional curiosity: 'What would happen if we did such and such?' What medical purpose was served by performing and studying beheadings? None at all. That was just playing around. Professional people, too, like to play.""   Prisoners were injected with diseases disguised as vaccinations to study their effects. For example, to analyze the results of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea, then studied. Prisoners were also repeatedly subjected to rape by guards.   Vivisection Thousands of people held in prisoner of war camps were subjected to vivisection (You all know what that is now. Organizations against animal experimentation generally use the phrase as a derogatory catch-all term for experiments on living animals, whereas practicing scientists seldom ever do. Live organ harvesting and other forms of human vivisection, as we also know, have been used as torture.), which was frequently done without anesthetic and was typically fatal. Okawa Fukumatsu, a former member of Unit 731, said in a video interview that he had vivisected a pregnant woman. Prisoners were infected with numerous illnesses before having their bodies vivisected. Invasive surgery was conducted on inmates to remove organs and learn how the condition affects the human body.   Inmates' limbs were severed so researchers could monitor blood loss. Sometimes the victims' corpses' severed limbs were reattached to their opposite sides. In addition, some convicts had surgical procedures to remove their stomachs and reconnect their esophagus to their intestines. Others had parts of their organs removed, including the brain, the liver, and the lungs. According to Imperial Japanese Army physician Ken Yuasa, at least 1,000 Japanese soldiers participated in vivisection on humans in mainland China, suggesting that the practice was commonly done outside Unit 731.   Biological warfare   Throughout World War II, Unit 731 and its related units—including Unit 1644 and Unit 100—were engaged in the study, production, and experimental use of epidemic-producing biowarfare weapons in attacks against the Chinese population (both military and civilian). For example, in 1940 and 1941, low-flying aircraft carried plague-carrying fleas over Chinese towns, notably coastal Ningbo and Changde, in the Hunan Province. These fleas were produced in the labs of Unit 731 and Unit 1644.   With bubonic plague epidemics, these flea bombs claimed tens of thousands of lives. During an expedition to Nanjing, typhoid and paratyphoid virus were dispersed into water supplies across the city's wells, marshes, and residences and infused into snacks served to inhabitants. Soon after, epidemics spread to the joy of many scientists, who concluded that paratyphoid fever was "the most effective" of the diseases.   At least 12 large-scale bioweapon field tests were conducted, and biological weapons were used to target 11 Chinese cities. According to reports, a 1941 raid on Changde resulted in some 10,000 biological injuries and 1,700 deaths among poorly equipped Japanese soldiers, most of which died of cholera. In addition, Japanese researchers conducted experiments on inmates suffering from cholera, smallpox, bubonic plague, and other illnesses. The defoliation bacilli bomb and the flea bomb, which were used to spread the bubonic plague, were developed as a result of this study. Ishii presented the concept of designing some of these bombs using porcelain shells in 1938.   These bombs allowed Japanese forces to launch biological strikes, infecting crops, water supplies, and other places with cholera, typhoid, anthrax, and other deadly illnesses via fleas. Researchers would study the victims dying during biological bomb trials while protected by protective suits. Aircraft would deliver contaminated food and clothes into parts of China that were not under Japanese control. Additionally, innocent people received candies and food that had been tainted.   On several targets, bombs containing plague fleas, contaminated clothes, and infected goods were dropped upon the unsuspecting citizens. As a result, at least 400,000 Chinese citizens were killed due to cholera, anthrax, and plague. Also tested on Chinese citizens was tularemia, Also known as rabbit fever or deer fly fever, which typically attacks the skin, eyes, lymph nodes, and lungs.   Chiang Kai-shek dispatched military and international medical specialists delegation to document the evidence and treat the sick in November 1941 in response to pressure from various stories of the biowarfare assaults. However, the Allied Powers did not respond to a report on the Japanese deployment of plague-infected fleas on Changde until Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a public warning in 1943 denouncing the attacks. The announcement was made publicly available the following year.   Obviously, this is ridiculous and inhumane, but it couldn't be used on us here in the U.S. of "Don't Tread On Me" A, right?   Well, hold on to your stars and stripes because during the final months of World War II, codenamed "Cherry Blossoms at Night," Unit 731 planned to use kamikaze pilots to infest San Diego, California, with the plague. The plan was scheduled to launch on September 22, 1945, but Japan surrendered five weeks earlier. So yep, if the United States had not dropped Fat Man and Little Boy on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there could have been a man-made plague set upon the west coast.   Weapons testing Human targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and positions. Flamethrowers were also tested on people. Victims were also tied to stakes and used as targets to test pathogen-releasing bombs, chemical weapons, shrapnel bombs with varying amounts of fragments, explosive bombs, and bayonets and knives.   To determine the best course of treatment for varying degrees of shrapnel wounds sustained on the field by Japanese Soldiers, Chinese prisoners were exposed to direct bomb blasts. They were strapped, unprotected, to wooden planks staked into the ground at increasing distances around a bomb that was then detonated. After that, it was surgery for most and autopsies for the rest.   This info was taken from the documentary — Unit 731, Nightmare in Manchuria   Other experiments   In other diplorable tests, subjects were deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death. They would then be placed into low-pressure chambers until their eyes popped from the sockets. Next, victims were tested to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival. Next, they were hung upside down until death; crushed with heavy objects; electrocuted; dehydrated with hot fans, placed into centrifuges, and spun until they died. People were also injected with animal blood, notably horse blood; exposed to lethal doses of X-rays; subjected to various chemical weapons inside gas chambers; injected with seawater; and burned or buried alive.   The Unit also looked at the characteristics of several other poisons and chemical agents. Prisoners were subjected to substances like tetrodotoxin (the venom of pufferfish or fugu), heroin, Korean bindweed, bactal, and castor-oil seeds, to mention a few (ricin). In addition, according to former Unit 731 vivisectionist Okawa Fukumatsu, large volumes of blood were removed from some detainees to research the consequences of blood loss. At least half a liter of blood was taken in one instance at intervals of two to three days.    The human body only contains 5 liters.   As we mentioned, dehydration experiments were performed on the victims. These tests aimed to determine the amount of water in an individual's body and how long one could survive with little to no water intake. Victims were also starved before these tests began. The deteriorating physical states of these victims were documented by staff at periodic intervals.   "It was said that a small number of these poor men, women, and children who became marutas were also mummified alive in total dehydration experiments. They sweated themselves to death under the heat of several hot dry fans. At death, the corpses would only weigh ≈1/5 normal bodyweight."   — Hal Gold, Japan's Infamous Unit 731, (2019)   Unit 731 also performed transfusion experiments with different blood types. For example, unit member Naeo Ikeda wrote:   In my experience, when 100 cc A type blood was transfused to an O-type subject, whose pulse was 87 per minute and temperature was 35.4 degrees C, 30 minutes later, their temperature rose to 38.6 degrees with slight trepidation. Sixty minutes later, their pulse was 106 per minute, and the temperature was 39.4 degrees. The temperature was 37.7 degrees two hours later, and the subject recovered three hours later. When 120 cc of AB-type blood was transfused to an O-type subject, an hour after the subject described malaise and psychroesthesia (feeling cold) in both legs. When 100 cc of A.B. type blood was transfused to a B-type subject, there seemed to be no side effects.   Taken from— "Man, Medicine, and the State: The Human Body as an Object of Government Sponsored Medical Research in the 20th Century" (2006) pp. 38–39 Unit 731 tested a slew of chemical agents on prisoners and had a building dedicated to gas experiments. Some of the agents tested were mustard gas, lewisite, cyanic acid gas, white phosphorus, adamsite, and phosgene gas. To put things in horrific perspective, the mortality rate from mustard gas was only 2-3%. Still, those who suffered chemical burns and respiratory problems had prolonged hospitalizations and, if they recovered, were thought to be at higher risk of developing cancers during later life. The toxic effects of lewisite are rapid onset and result from acute exposures. The vesicant properties of lewisite result from direct skin contact; it has been estimated that as little as 2 ml to an adult human (equivalent to 37.6 mg/kg) can be fatal within several hours. Airborne release of cyanide gas, in the form of hydrogen cyanide or cyanogen chloride, would be expected to be lethal to 50% of those exposed (LCt50) at levels of 2,500-5,000 mg•min/m^3 and 11,000 mg•min/m^3, respectively. When ingested as sodium or potassium cyanide, the lethal dose is 100-200 mg. According to a medical report prepared during the hostilities by the ministry of health, "[w]hite phosphorus can cause serious injury and death when it comes into contact with the skin, is inhaled or is swallowed." The report states that burns on less than 10 percent of the body can be fatal because of liver, kidneys, and heart damage. Adamsite (D.M.) is a vomiting compound used as a riot-control agent (military designation, D.M.). It is released as an aerosol. Adverse health effects from exposure to adamsite (D.M.) are generally self-limited and do not require specific therapy. Most adverse health effects resolve within 30 minutes. Exposure to large concentrations of adamsite (D.M.), or exposure to adamsite (D.M.) within an enclosed space or under adverse weather conditions, may result in more severe adverse health effects, serious illness, or death.  Phosgene is highly toxic by acute (short-term) inhalation exposure. Severe respiratory effects, including pulmonary edema, pulmonary emphysema, and death, have been reported in humans. Severe ocular irritation and dermal burns may result following eye or skin exposure. It is estimated that as many as 85% of the 91,000 gas deaths in WWI were a result of phosgene or the related agent, diphosgene A former army major and technician gave the following testimony anonymously (at the time of the interview, this man was a professor emeritus at a national university): "In 1943, I attended a poison gas test held at the Unit 731 test facilities. A glass-walled chamber about three meters square [97 sq ft] and two meters [6.6 ft] high was used. Inside of it, a Chinese man was blindfolded, with his hands tied around a post behind him. The gas was adamsite (sneezing gas), and as the gas filled the chamber the man went into violent coughing convulsions and began to suffer excruciating pain. More than ten doctors and technicians were present. After I had watched for about ten minutes, I could not stand it any more, and left the area. I understand that other types of gasses were also tested there."   Taken from— Hal Gold, Japan's Infamous Unit 731, p. 349 (2019)   Super gross. Takeo Wano, a former medical employee of Unit 731, claimed to have observed a Western man being pickled in formaldehyde after being chopped in half vertically. Because so many Russians were residing in the neighborhood at the time, Wano suspected that the man was Russian. Additionally, Unit 100 experimented with poisonous gas. The captives were housed in mobile gas chambers that resembled phone booths. Others donned military uniforms, while others were made to wear various sorts of gas masks, and other people wore nothing at all. It's been said that some of the tests are "psychopathically cruel, with no possible military purpose." One experiment, for instance, measured how long it took for three-day-old newborns to freeze to death. Jesus christ. Additionally, Unit 731 conducted field tests of chemical weapons on detainees. An unknown researcher at the Kamo Unit (Unit 731) wrote a paper that details a significant (mustard gas) experiment on humans from September 7–10, 1940. Twenty participants were split into three groups and put in observation gazebos, trenches, and fighting emplacements. One group received up to 1,800 field cannon rounds of mustard gas for 25 minutes while wearing Chinese underpants, without a cap or a mask. Another set had shoes and a summer military outfit; three wore masks, while the others did not.   They also were exposed to as many as 1,800 rounds of mustard gas. A third group was clothed in summer military uniform, three with masks and two without masks, and were exposed to as many as 4,800 rounds. Then their general symptoms and damage to the skin, eye, respiratory organs, and digestive organs were observed at 4 hours, 24 hours, and 2, 3, and 5 days after the shots.  Holy shit. Then the psychopaths injected the blister fluid from one subject into another, and analyses of blood and soil were also performed. Finally, five subjects were forced to drink a water solution of mustard and lewisite gas, with or without decontamination. The report describes the conditions of every subject precisely without mentioning what happened to them in the long run. The following is an excerpt of one of these reports:   "Number 376, dugout of the first area:   September 7, 1940, 6 pm: Tired and exhausted. Looks with hollow eyes. Weeping redness of the skin of the upper part of the body. Eyelids edematous (uh-dim-uh-tose)(Swollen with fluid), swollen. Epiphora. (excessive watering), Hyperemic conjunctivae (ocular redness).   September 8, 1940, 6 am: Neck, breast, upper abdomen, and scrotum weeping, reddened, swollen. Covered with millet-seed-size to bean-size blisters. Eyelids and conjunctivae hyperemic and edematous. Had difficulties opening the eyes. September 8, 6 pm: Tired and exhausted. Feels sick. Body temperature 37 degrees Celsius. Mucous and bloody erosions across the shoulder girdle. Abundant mucus nose secretions. Abdominal pain. Mucous and bloody diarrhea. Proteinuria (excess protein in urinal, possibly meaning kidney damage).   September 9, 1940, 7 am: Tired and exhausted. Weakness of all four extremities.   Low morale. Body temperature 37 degrees Celsius. Skin of the face still weeping.   Taken from— "Man, Medicine, and the State: The Human Body as an Object of Government Sponsored Medical Research in the 20th Century" (2006) p. 187 Frostbite testing   Hisato Yoshimura, an Army engineer, carried out tests by forcing captives to stand outside, putting various limbs into water at multiple temperatures, and letting the limb freeze. Yoshimura would then use a small stick to whack the victims' frozen limbs while "producing a sound similar to that which a board emits when it is struck." The damaged region was then treated with different methods, such as dousing it in water or exposing it to the heat of a fire once the ice had been chipped away.   The sadistic fuck, Yoshimura, was described to the members of the Unit as a "scientific devil" and a "cold-blooded animal" because of the strictness with which he would carry out his evil experiments. In an interview from the 1980s, Unit 731 member Naoji Uezono revealed a super uncool and nightmare-inducing incident when Yoshimura had "Researchers placed two nude males in an area that was 40–50 degrees below zero and documented the entire process until the individuals passed away. [The victims] were in such pain that they were tearing at each other's flesh with their nails ". In a 1950 essay for the Journal Of Japanese Physiology, Yoshimura revealed his lack of regret for torturing 20 kids and a three-day-old baby in tests that subjected them to ice water and ice temperatures below zero.   Although this article drew criticism, Yoshimura denied any guilt when contacted by a reporter from the Mainichi Shimbun. Yoshimura developed a "resistance index of frostbite" based on the mean temperature of 5 to 30 minutes after immersion in freezing water, the temperature of the first rise after immersion, and the time until the temperature rises after immersion. In several separate experiments, it was then determined how these parameters depend on the time of day a victim's body part was immersed in freezing water, the surrounding temperature and humidity during immersion, and how the victim had been treated before the immersion. Variables like ("after keeping awake for a night", "after hunger for 24 hours", "after hunger for 48 hours", "immediately after heavy meal", "immediately after hot meal", "immediately after muscular exercise", "immediately after cold bath", "immediately after hot bath"), what type of food the victim had been fed over the five days preceding the immersions concerning dietary nutrient intake ("high protein (of animal nature)", "high protein (of vegetable nature)", "low protein intake", and "standard diet"), and salt intake (45 g NaCl per day, 15 g NaCl per day, no salt).   Oh, science....   Then there's syphilis.   For those that may not know, syphilis is a chronic bacterial disease contracted chiefly by infection during sexual intercourse but also congenitally by infection of a developing fetus. The first sign of syphilis is a small, brownish dot on the infected person's left hand. How many of you looked? You dirty birds!  Actually, the first stage of syphilis involves a painless sore on the genitals, rectum, or mouth. After the initial sore heals, the second stage is characterized by a rash. Then, there are no symptoms until the final stage, which may occur years later. This final stage can result in damage to the brain, nerves, eyes, or heart. Syphilis is treated with penicillin. Sexual partners should also be treated. Unit members orchestrated forced sex acts between infected and noninfected prisoners to transmit syphilis, as the testimony of a prison guard on the subject of devising a method for transmission of syphilis between patients shows:   "Infection of venereal disease by injection was abandoned, and the researchers started forcing the prisoners into sexual acts with each other. Four or five unit members, dressed in white laboratory clothing completely covering the body with only eyes and mouth visible, rest covered, handled the tests. A male and female, one infected with syphilis, would be brought together in a cell and forced into sex with each other. It was made clear that anyone resisting would be shot."   These unfortunate victims were infected and then vivisected at various stages of infection to view the interior and exterior organs as the disease developed. Despite being forcefully infected, many guards testified that the female victims were the viruses' hosts. Guards used the term "jam-filled buns" to refer to the syphilis-infected female detainees' genitalia.   And THAT is so gross on just about every level.   Inside the confines of Unit 731, several syphilis-infected children grew up. "One was a Chinese mother carrying a baby, one was a White Russian woman with a daughter of four or five years of age, and the final was a White Russian woman with a kid of around six or seven," recounted a Youth Corps member who was sent to train at Unit 731. Similar tests were performed on these women's offspring, focusing on how prolonged infection times influenced the success of therapies.   Just when you thought this shit was bad enough, the rape and forced pregnancies came.   For use in experiments, nonpregnant female convicts were made to get pregnant. The declared justification for the torture was the possible danger of infections, notably syphilis, being transmitted vertically (from mother to kid). In addition, their interests included maternal reproductive organ injury and fetal survival. There have been no reports of any Unit 731 survivors, including children, even though "a considerable number of newborns were born in captivity." Female captives' offspring are said to have either been aborted or murdered after birth.   While male prisoners were often used in single studies so that the results of the experimentation on them would not be clouded by other variables, women were sometimes used in bacteriological or physiological experiments, sex experiments, and as the victims of sex crimes. The testimony of a unit member that served as a guard graphically demonstrated this violent and disturbing reality:   "One of the former researchers I located told me that one day he had a human experiment scheduled, but there was still time to kill. So he and another unit member took the keys to the cells and opened one that housed a Chinese woman. One of the unit members raped her; the other member took the keys and opened another cell. There was a Chinese woman in there who had been used in a frostbite experiment. She had several fingers missing and her bones were black, with gangrene set in. He was about to rape her anyway, then he saw that her sex organ was festering, with pus oozing to the surface. He gave up the idea, left and locked the door, then later went on to his experimental work."   What in the actual fuck.   Prisoners and victims   An "International Symposium on the Crimes of Bacteriological Warfare" was convened in Changde, China, the scene of the plague flea bombardment, as mentioned earlier, in 2002. There, it was calculated that around 580,000 people had been killed by the Imperial Japanese Army's germ warfare and other human experimentation. According to American historian Sheldon H. Harris, more than 200,000 people perished. In addition, 1,700 Japanese soldiers in Zhejiang during the Zhejiang-Jiangxi war were killed by their own biological weapons while attempting to release the biological agent, showing major distribution problems in addition to the Chinese deaths. Additionally, according to Harris, animals infected with the plague were released close to the war's conclusion, leading to plague outbreaks that, between 1946 and 1948, killed at least 30,000 people in the Harbin region.   Those chosen as test subjects included common criminals, captured bandits, anti-Japanese partisans, political prisoners, homeless people, and people with mental disabilities, including infants, men, elderly people, and pregnant women, in addition to those detained by the Kenpeitai military police for alleged "suspicious activities." About 300 researchers worked at Unit 731, including medical professionals and bacteriologists. However, many people have become numb to carrying out harsh tests due to their experience with animal experimentation.   Without considering victims from other medical research facilities like Unit 100, at least 3,000 men, women, and children: 117—of which at least 600 each year were given by the Kenpeitai—were subjected to Unit 731 experimentation at the Pingfang camp alone. Although the literature generally accepts the number of 3,000 internal casualties, former Unit member Okawa Fukumatsu challenged it in a video interview. He claimed that the Unit had at least 10,000 internal experiments victims and that he had personally vivisected thousands of them.   S. Wells said that Chinese people made up most of the casualties, with smaller proportions of Russian, Mongolian, and Korean people. A few European, American, Indian, Australian, and New Zealander prisoners of war may have also been among them. According to a Yokusan Sonendan paramilitary political youth branch member who worked for Unit 731, Americans, British, and French were present, in addition to Chinese, Russians, and Koreans. According to Sheldon H. Harris' research, the victims were primarily political dissidents, communist sympathizers, common criminals, low-income residents, and those with mental disabilities. According to estimates by author Seiichi Morimura, about 70% of the Pingfang camp's fatalities (both military and civilian) were Chinese, while roughly 30% were Russian.   Nobody who went inside Unit 731 survived. Let me repeat that: "Nobody that went inside Unit 731 survived".  At night, prisoners were usually brought into Unit 731 in black cars with no windows but only a ventilation hole. One of the drivers would exit the vehicle at the main gates and head to the guardroom to report to the guard. The "Special Team" in the inner jail, which was led by Shiro Ishii's brother, would then get a call from that guard. The convicts would then be taken to the inner prisons via an underground tunnel excavated beneath the center building's exterior.   Building 8 was one of the jails housing men and women while building 7 held just women. Once inside the inner jail, technicians would take blood and feces samples from the inmates, assess their kidney function, and gather other physical information. Prisoners found healthy and suitable for research were given a three-digit number instead of their names, which they kept until they passed away. Every time a prisoner passed away following the tests they had undergone, a clerk from the 1st Division crossed their names off of an index card and took their shackles to be worn by newly arrived captives.   At least one "friendly" social interaction between inmates and Unit 731 employees has been documented. Two female convicts were engaged by technician Naokata Ishibashi. One prisoner was a Chinese woman, age 21, while the other was a Soviet woman, age 19. Ishibashi discovered that she was from Ukraine after asking where she was from. The two inmates urged Ishibashi to acquire a mirror since they claimed to have not seen their own faces since being taken prisoner. Through a gap in the cell door, Ishibashi managed to covertly get a mirror to them. As long as they were healthy enough, prisoners were regularly employed for experimentation. Once a prisoner had been admitted to the Unit, they had a two-month life expectancy on average. Many female convicts gave birth there, and some inmates remained alive in the unit for nearly a year. The jail cells each featured a squat toilet and wood floors. The prison's exterior walls and the cells' outer walls were separated by space, allowing the guards to pass behind the cells. There was a little window in each cell door. When shown the inner jail, Chief of the Personnel Division of the Kwantung Army Headquarters, Tamura Tadashi, stated that he glanced inside the cells and observed live individuals in chains, some of whom moved around, while others lay on the bare floor and were in a very ill and helpless condition.   Yoshio Shinozuka, a former Unit 731 Youth Corps member, testified that it was difficult to look through these prison doors because of their tiny windows. Cast iron doors and a high level of security made up the inner jail. No one was allowed admission without specific authorization, a picture I.D. pass, and the entry/exit timings were recorded. These two inner-prison structures were the "special team's" workspaces. This group wore white overalls, army caps, rubber boots, and carried guns.   A former member of the Special Team (who insisted on anonymity) recalled in 1995 his first vivisection conducted at the Unit:   "He didn't struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down. But when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped. This was all in a day's work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time."   — Anonymous, The New York Times (March 17 1995)   According to some reports, it was standard procedure at the Unit for doctors to place a piece of cloth (or a portion of medical gauze) inside a prisoner's lips before starting vivisection to muffle any screams.   Even though the jail was pretty secure, there was at least one effort to break out... That failed. According to Corporal Kikuchi Norimitsu's testimony, a fellow unit member informed him that a prisoner had been taken "jumped out of the cell and ran down the corridor, grabbed the keys, and opened the iron doors and some of the cells" after "having shown violence and had struck the experimenter with a door handle." Only the bravest of the inmates were able to jump free, though. These brave ones were killed ". Seiichi Morimura goes into further depth about this attempt at escapology in his book The Devil's Feast.   Two male Russian prisoners were being held in handcuffs in a cell. One of them was lying flat on the ground and acting like he was sick. One of the staff members noticed and decided to go inside the cell. The Russian on the ground, suddenly sprang up and overpowered the guard. The two Russians yelled, unlocked their shackles, grabbed the keys, and opened a few more cells. Other Russian and Chinese prisoners were freaking out, up and down the halls while shouting and screaming. Finally, one Russian yelled at the members of Unit 731, pleading with them to shoot him rather than use him as a test subject.   This Russian was gunned down and murdered. One employee who saw the attempted escape remembered what happened: "In comparison to the "marutas," who had both freedom and weapons, we were all spiritually lost. We knew in our hearts at the moment that justice was not on our side ". Even if the prisoners had been able to leave the quadrangle, a vigorously defended facility staffed with guards, they would have had to traverse a dry moat lined with electric wire and a three-meter-high brick wall to get to the complex's outside.   Even members of Unit 731 weren't free from being subjects of experiments. Yoshio Tamura, an assistant in the Special Team, recalled that Yoshio Sudō, an employee of the first Division at Unit 731, became infected with bubonic plague due to the production of plague bacteria. The Special Team was then ordered to vivisect Sudō. About this Tamura said:   "Sudō had, a few days previously, been interested in talking about women, but now he was thin as a rake, with many purple spots over his body. A large area of scratches on his chest were bleeding. He painfully cried and breathed with difficulty. I sanitised his whole body with disinfectant. Whenever he moved, a rope around his neck tightened. After Sudō's body was carefully checked [by the surgeon], I handed a scalpel to [the surgeon] who, reversely gripping the scalpel, touched Sudō's stomach skin and sliced downward. Sudō shouted "brute!" and died with this last word."   Taken from— Criminal History of Unit 731 of the Japanese Military, pp. 118–119 (1991)   Additionally, Unit 731 Youth Corps member Yoshio Shinozuka testified that his friend, junior assistant Mitsuo Hirakawa, was vivisected due to being accidentally infected with the plague.   Surrender and immunity Operations and experiments continued until the end of the war. Ishii had wanted to use biological weapons in the Pacific War since May 1944, but he was repeatedly told to fuck off.   With the coming of the Red Army in August 1945, the unit had to abandon its work in a hurry. Ministries in Tokyo ordered the destruction of all incriminating materials, including those in Pingfang. Potential witnesses, such as the 300 remaining prisoners, were either gassed or fed poison while the 600 Chinese and Manchurian laborers were all frigging shot. Ishii ordered every group member to disappear and "take the secret to the grave." Potassium cyanide vials were issued for use in case the remaining personnel was captured.   Skeleton crews of Ishii's Japanese troops blew up the compound in the war's final days to destroy any evidence of their activities. Still, many were sturdy enough to remain somewhat intact.   Among the individuals in Japan after its 1945 surrender was Lieutenant Colonel Murray Sanders, whose name doesn't really sound Japanese and who arrived in Yokohama via the American ship Sturgess in September 1945. Sanders was a highly regarded microbiologist and a member of America's military center for biological weapons. Sanders' duty was to investigate Japanese biological warfare activity, and B.O.Y. was there a shit ton! At the time of his arrival in Japan, he had no knowledge of what Unit 731 was. Until he finally threatened the Japanese with bringing the Soviets into the picture, little information about their biological warfare was being shared with the Americans. The Japanese wanted to avoid prosecution under the Soviet legal system, so the morning after he made his threat, Sanders received a manuscript describing Japan's involvement in biological warfare. Sanders took this information to General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers responsible for rebuilding Japan during the Allied occupation. As a result, MacArthur struck a deal with Japanese informants: he secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731, including their leader, in exchange for providing America, but not the other wartime allies, with their research on biological warfare and data from human experimentation. Yessiree, bob! You heard that correctly! American occupation authorities monitored the activities of former unit members, including going through and messing with their mail. The Americans believed the research data was valuable and didn't want other nations, especially those guys with the sickle, you know... the Soviet Union, to get their red hands on the data for biological weapons.   The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal heard only one reference to Japanese experiments with "poisonous serums" on Chinese civilians. This took place in August 1946 and was instigated by David Sutton, assistant to the Chinese prosecutor. The Japanese defense counsel argued that the claim was vague and uncorroborated, and it was dismissed by the tribunal president, Sir William Webb, for lack of evidence! The subject was not pursued further by Sutton, who was probably unaware of Unit 731's activities and allegedly a fucking idiot. His reference to it at the trial is believed to have been "accidental."   While German physicians were brought to trial and had their crimes publicized, the U.S. concealed information about Japanese biological warfare experiments and secured immunity for the monsters. I mean perpetrators.  Critics argue that racism led to the double standard in the American postwar responses to the experiments conducted on different nationalities. For example, whereas the perpetrators of Unit 731 were exempt from prosecution, the U.S. held a tribunal in Yokohama in 1948 that indicted nine Japanese physician professors and medical students for conducting vivisection upon captured American pilots; two professors were sentenced to death and others to 15–20 years' imprisonment. So, it's one thing to do it to THOUSANDS OF CHINESE AND RUSSIANS, but HOW DARE you do that to one of us! The fuck?   Although publicly silent on the issue at the Tokyo Trials, the Soviet Union pursued the case and prosecuted 12 top military leaders and scientists from Unit 731 and its affiliated biological-war prisons Unit 1644 in Nanjing and Unit 100 in Changchun in the Khabarovsk war crimes trials. Among those accused of war crimes, including germ warfare, was General Otozō Yamada, commander-in-chief of the million-man Kwantung Army occupying Manchuria.   The trial of the Japanese monsters was held in Khabarovsk in December 1949; a lengthy partial transcript of trial proceedings was published in different languages the following year by the Moscow foreign languages press, including an English-language edition. The lead prosecuting attorney at the Khabarovsk trial was Lev Smirnov, one of the top Soviet prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials. The Japanese doctors and army commanders who had perpetrated the Unit 731 experiments received sentences from the Khabarovsk court ranging from 2 to 25 years in a Siberian labor camp. The United States refused to acknowledge the trials, branding them communist propaganda. The sentences doled out to the Japanese perpetrators were unusually lenient by Soviet standards. All but two of the defendants returned to Japan by the 1950s (with one prisoner dying in prison and the other committing suicide inside his cell). In addition to the accusations of propaganda, the U.S. also asserted that the trials were to only serve as a distraction from the Soviet treatment of several hundred thousand Japanese prisoners of war; meanwhile, the USSR asserted that the U.S. had given the Japanese diplomatic leniency in exchange for information regarding their human experimentation. The accusations of both the U.S. and the USSR were true. It is believed that the Japanese had also given information to the Soviets regarding their biological experimentation for judicial leniency. This was evidenced by the Soviet Union building a biological weapons facility in Sverdlovsk using documentation captured from Unit 731 in Manchuria.   Official silence during the American occupation of Japan As we, unfortunately, mentioned earlier, during the United States occupation of Japan, the members of Unit 731 and the members of other experimental units were set free. However, on May 6, 1947, Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, wrote to Washington to inform it that "additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii, can probably be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as 'war crimes' evidence."   One graduate of Unit 1644, Masami Kitaoka, continued to perform experiments on unwilling Japanese subjects from 1947 to 1956. While working for Japan's National Institute of Health Sciences, he completed his experiments. He infected prisoners with rickettsia and infected mentally-ill patients with typhus. As the unit's chief, Shiro Ishii was granted immunity from prosecution for war crimes by the American occupation authorities because he had provided human experimentation research materials to them. However, from 1948 to 1958, less than five percent of the documents were transferred onto microfilm and stored in the U.S. National Archives before they were shipped back to Japan.   Post-occupation Japanese media coverage and debate Japanese discussions of Unit 731's activity began in the 1950s after the American occupation of Japan ended. In 1952, human experiments carried out in Nagoya City Pediatric Hospital, which resulted in one death, were publicly tied to former members of Unit 731. Later in that decade, journalists suspected that the murders attributed by the government to Sadamichi Hirasawa were actually carried out by members of Unit 731. In 1958, Japanese author Shūsaku Endō published The Sea and Poison about human experimentation in Fukuoka, which is thought to have been based on an actual incident.   The author Seiichi Morimura published The Devil's Gluttony in 1981, followed by The Devil's Gluttony: A Sequel in 1983. These books purported to reveal the "true" operations of Unit 731 but falsely attributed unrelated photos to the Unit, which raised questions about their accuracy.   Also, in 1981, the first direct testimony of human vivisection in China was given by Ken Yuasa. Since then, much more in-depth testimony has been given in Japan. For example, the 2001 documentary Japanese Devils primarily consists of interviews with fourteen Unit 731 staff members taken prisoner by China and later released.   Significance in postwar research on bio-warfare and medicine Japanese Biological Warfare operations were by far the largest during WWII, and "possibly with more people and resources than the B.W. producing nations of France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and the Soviet Union combined, between the world wars. Although the dissemination methods of delivering plague-infected fleas by aircraft were crude, the method, among others, allowed the Japanese to "conduct the most extensive employment of biological weapons during WWII." However, the amount of effort devoted to B.W. was not matched by its results. Ultimately, inadequate scientific and engineering foundations limited the effectiveness of the Japanese program. Harris speculates that U.S. scientists generally wanted to acquire it due to the concept of forbidden fruit, believing that lawful and ethical prohibitions could affect the outcomes of their research.   Unit 731 presents a particular problem since, unlike Nazi human experimentation, which the United States publicly condemned, the activities of Unit 731 are known to the general public only from the testimonies of willing former unit members.   Japanese history textbooks usually reference Unit 731 but do not detail allegations following there strict principles. However, Saburō Ienaga's New History of Japan included a detailed description based on officers' testimony. The Ministry for Education attempted to remove this passage from his textbook before it was taught in public schools because the testimony was insufficient. The Supreme Court of Japan ruled in 1997 that the testimony was sufficient and that requiring it to be removed was an illegal violation of freedom of speech.   In 1997, international lawyer Kōnen Tsuchiya filed a class action suit against the Japanese government, demanding reparations for the actions of Unit 731, using evidence filed by Professor Makoto Ueda of Rikkyo University. All levels of the Japanese court system found the suit baseless. No findings of fact were made about the existence of human experimentation, but the court's ruling was that reparations are determined by international treaties, not national courts.   In August 2002, the Tokyo district court ruled that Japan had engaged in biological warfare for the first time. Presiding judge Koji Iwata ruled that Unit 731, on the orders of the Imperial Japanese Army headquarters, used bacteriological weapons on Chinese civilians between 1940 and 1942, spreading diseases, including plague and typhoid, in the cities of Quzhou, Ningbo, and Changde. However, he rejected victims' compensation claims because they had already been settled by international peace treaties.   In October 2003, a Japan's House of Representatives member filed an inquiry. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi responded that the Japanese government did not then possess any records related to Unit 731 but recognized the gravity of the matter and would publicize any records located in the future. As a result, in April 2018, the National Archives of Japan released the names of 3,607 members of Unit 731 in response to a request by Professor Katsuo Nishiyama of the Shiga University of Medical Science.   After World War II, the Office of Special Investigations created a watchlist of suspected Axis collaborators and persecutors who were banned from entering the United States. While they have added over 60,000 names to the watchlist, they have only been able to identify under 100 Japanese participants. In a 1998 correspondence letter between the D.O.J. and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Eli Rosenbaum, director of O.S.I., stated that this was due to two factors:   While most documents captured by the U.S. in Europe were microfilmed before being returned to their respective governments, the Department of Defense decided to not microfilm its vast collection of records before returning them to the Japanese government.   The Japanese government has also failed to grant the O.S.I. meaningful access to these and related records after the war. In contrast, European countries, on the other hand, have been largely cooperative, the cumulative effect of which is that information on identifying these individuals is, in effect, impossible to recover.   Top Movies about war crimes   https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?title_type=feature&genres=war&genres=Crime   All info comes from the inter webs. Blame them.    Damn, this was a gross episode.   Are you actually reading this? That's awesome! How's it going? Life good?   

Last time we spoke, Sun Kewang, Li Dingguo and Emperor Yongli formed a sort of trinity that was chipping away at the Qing dynasty. Each man had his talents and combined they proved a formidable foe, but divided would they fall. Sun Kewang's jealousy led him to butt heads with Li Dingguo undermining all the success they had made. When Sun Kewang was defeated a part of the trinity was gone and the forces of Li Dingguo and Emperor Yongli could not hope to stand against the Qing invaders as they marched into Yunnan. Emperor Yongli took flight to Burma forcing Li Dingguo to spend years trying to rescue him from the Burmese while fighting off the looming Qing menace. In the end even Li Dingguo could not stop the inevitable as he and Emperor Yongli fell. Now the Qing can face their last looming menace, the King of Taiwan, Koxinga.    This episode is Koxinga & the revolt of the three feudatories   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. I have repeatedly said his name, in the west we know him as Koxinga, his actual name being Zheng Chenggong.  It would be his marine forces that would fight the Qing Dynasty until the bitter end. He was born with the name Zheng Sen in 1624, in Hirado Japan, to Zheng Zhilong a chinese merchant and a Japanese woman named Tagawa Matsu. When Zheng was 7 years old, his father had business interests in Quanzhou and the family moved to Fujian province. His father would end up becoming one of the richest men in China and an Admiral under the Ming Dynasty. Zheng Zhilong operated a pirate fleet of over 800 ships along the coast from Japan to Vietnam. The Ming appointed him “admiral of the coastal seas” and he basically was tasked with repeling other pirates and the Dutch East Indies Company. The fruits of his labor wound him up grabbing over 60% of Fujian province land. Zheng Sen would pass the imperial examination at the age of 14 in 1638 becoming one of 12 Linshansheng of Nan'an. Linshansheng basically means the best of the best as students go. In Nan'an, Zheng married the niece of a Ming official named Dong Yangxian who was a Jinshi, meaning he held the highest imperial exam degree, so basically Zheng was brushing shoulders with giants so to say. In 1644 he studied at the imperial Nanking University.   When the Qing captured Beijing, Zheng's father, Zheng Zhilong continued to serve the Ming moving to Nanjing, then after the capture of Nanjing in 1645 accepted an offer to serve  as commander in chief of the Ming forces working under the Prince of Tang in Fuzhou. It seems the war of resistance had gone to terribly for Zheng Zhilong because he became a turncoat in 1646, intentionally leaving the Zhejiang pass unguarded and allowed the Qing to capture Fuzhou. Zheng Zhilong defected to the Qing, but the Zheng army's control lay firmly in his brothers and sons hands. That son, Zheng Sen refused to defect to the Qing and would take most of the Zheng army with him, causing problems. As for his wife Tagawa Matsu, it is alleged the Qing went to Anhai where she was residing in a castle, which I found particularly interesting since this is during the Sakoku period and it was illegal for Japanese to leave the country. Anyways its alleged the Qing marched upon the castle where she was and raped and or killed her. Other stories state she committed suicide while resisting the Qing. Regardless of the implications of her death, the Qing knew they could not trust Zheng Zhilong and would have him put under house arrest for many years until they executed him in 1661. It is said in 1646, while Zheng Sen was busy fighting off the Qing he managed to return to Quanzhou where he discovered his mother had been murdered or committed suicide because of the Qing and thus rebellion was firmly placed in his heart. I cant really get into it but there is an entire mythos around lady Tagawa and multiple perceptions on her and her legacy.    When the Qing took Beijing and gave their head shaving proclamation, Zheng Sen  refused and it is said his will was “as strong and firm as a mountain”. As I had said the Zheng army did not all follow Zheng Zhilong and defect with the Qing, many would follow Zheng Sen. Soon Zheng Sen recruited more followers and organized allied armies in Nan'an Guangdong. When Emperor Hongguang took the mantle, Zheng Sen flocked over to him in Nanking. When Emperor Hongguang was defeated and executed, Emperor Longwu rose up with support from Zheng's father. Emperor Longwu established himself in Fuzhou and the natural defenses of Fujian allowed him to remain safe for some time. Emperor Longwu granted Zheng Sen the name Chenggong and the title of Koxinga “lord of the Imperial Surname”.    In 1646 Koxinga led the Ming armies to resist the Qing, much to his fathers displeasure who wished for a more defensive stance. When the Qing finally broke into Fujian, as I mentioned Zheng Zhilong literally opened the door to them, leaving Emperor Longwu isolated agaisnt the Qing. After the Emperor Longwu was defeated and executed, the Qing approached Zheng Zhilong and got him to defect and secretly appointed him governor of Fujian and Guangdong. Despite the betrayal of his father, Koxinga chose to fight on and led Zheng Zhilong's marine forces to attack Tong'an, Haicheng, Zhangfu and captured Quanzhou and Minan. Because the Qing never placed much emphasis on naval matters, Koxinga's naval forces basically could pick and choose at will where to do amphibious assaults providing him with many successful raids. Zheng Zhilong would send letters to his son asking him to defect to the Qing like he did, but they were to no avail and Koxinga pledged his allegiance to the only remaining claimant to the throne the Emperor of flight Yongli. Before Koxinga could get to Emperor Yongli he as you guessed it began the process of fleeing and this basically resulted in Koxinga never being able to link up with him. As a result Koxinga chose to concentrate on the southeast coast of China where he could safely move via his naval forces. Koxinga's army soon established its base of operations in Kinmen and Xiamen. Using his base of Kinmen and Xiamen, Koxinga established a marine trade network and the anti-Qing forces grew quickly. By 1652 Koxinga led a force of 100,000 to attack Haicheng, Changtai, Zhangzhou, Zhangfu amongst other places. He also greatly benefitted by working alongside the Daxi army. In 1653 Koxinga tried to coordinate with Li Dingguo's army in Guangxi and deployed his navy southwards towards Chaozhou. The following year Li and Koxinga agreed to meet in Guangdong and attack Xinhui together, but this plan never came to fruition. Koxinga's forces simply took too long to get there and Li Dingguo's army was defeated and he had to retreat to Guangxi. In 1655, Koxinga attacked the coastal area of Fujian defeating several Qing armies. Koxinga and Li then planned a northern campaign where they would coordinate rear and frontal attacks upon the Qing.    In may of 1656, the Qing sent Prince Jidu to attack Koxinga's territory. Jidu's forces attacked Kinmen island, Koxinga's main base for training his troops. However a storm at sea battered the Qing ships and as a result they lost the battle against the Kinmen island. This also weakened Qing naval forces in the Fujian coastal area, opening many places for attacks by Koxinga. Then in 1658 the Qing armies carried large offensives against Li Dingguo in the southwestern area, prompting Koxinga to strike at the coastal areas in Zhejiang to try and relieve Li Dingguo's forces. However Koxinga's navy was hit by a hurricane at sea and they were forced to withdraw. This did not stop Koxinga from sending a large army to Zhoushan however, where he sought a base of operations to stage a siege of Nanjing. Koxinga however was quite eager and publicly proclaimed his intent to siege Nanjing, giving the Qing ample time and reason to prepare stronger defenses there.   In 1659 Koxinga marched north alongside his colleague Zhang Huangyan capturing Guazhou and Zhenjing before they would besiege Nanjing. They sprang through the Yangtze River with their navy igniting resistance everywhere they went against the Qing. Koxinga's naval operations in the Yangtze River would hinder Qing supply routes and effectively were starving Beijing out, stressing the hell out of the Qing court. If it is to be believed, an account by a French missionary in Beijing reported they court considered packing up and going back to Manchuria because of what was essential a naval blockade of Beijing. Things got so bad in Beijing the French missionary states the populace of Beijing was waiting to see who would win the siege of Nanjing and were looking to join that said winner. The Qing were reportedly terrified of Koxinga's “iron troops” who were rumored to be invincible.    The siege of Nanjing shocked the Qing, but Koxinga became cocky and in his arrogance he took his enemy lightly. He publicly announced to the populace all they had to do was to join his cause and that he would occupy Nanjing in short time. Koxinga believed that by taking Nanjing he could firmly blockade the grand canal and starve out Beijing  forcing them to pack up and run back to Manchuria, if the sources I talked about before are to be believed, it looks like his plan was working. Lang Tingzuo the governor trapped in Nanjing began to negotiate with Koxinga and Zhang, but in truth he was biding time for the Qing forces to come to the rescue. Despite Koxinga's best efforts besieging Nanjing,  the city was never completely encircled and thus able to obtain supplies and reinforcements in the form of the Qing General Liang Huafeng. After 3 weeks of the siege, suddenly General Liang and his army burst out the gates of Nanjing in a cavalry charge as the Ming forces were busy partying and they were smashed. The entire Ming army fell into disarray and began to retreat back to their ships and Koxinga was forced to withdraw back to Xiamen.  Meanwhile his colleague Zhang had taken a ton of their forces to hit Anhui and was now left high and dry. Zhang's army was eventually and  completely collapsed, but the commander was able to escape to Tiantai where he tried to form another resistance in the mountain range. He would fail to produce anything and by 1664 was captured and executed by the Qing.   Koxinga had lost half his land army, his colleague and many other officers because of his arrogant attack on Nanjing. It seems Koxinga suffered tremendous psychological damage from the major defeat and the loss of so many members of his family. He was known to be quite mentally unstable and had a horrible temper and tendency to order executions at a whim. A Dutch doctor named Christian Beyer who treated him believed he may have been suffering from Syphilis, some other contemporaries believed his mentality was the result of his Japanese upbringing in the form of “samurai ideals on bravery” like laughing to showcase his anger and being prone to quick violence. According to Dr Li Yengyue, he stated Koxinga most likely suffered from depressive insanity.  At this time Li Dingguo's forces were being pushed further southwest and quite simply, the situation did not look good to say the least. This led Koxinga to gather all his officials in secret and tell them he now intended to occupy Taiwan and establish a base there from which they could all settle with their families in safety. He said that perhaps there they could unite all those who were loyal to the Ming and one day they would launch an attack on the Qing and fight the enemy without having to worry about the lives of their families. Thus when the Qing marched upon his stronghold of Xiamen in 1660, Koxinga instead of offering battle sailed off with over 400 war junks and 25,000 troops to Taiwan. Before the departure Koxinga had received a map of Taiwan from a Chinese merchant named He Bin who worked for the Dutch East India company.   It was also during this time when Koxinga had the family of one of his admirals named Shi Lang killed because the admiral allegedly was planning to defect to the Qing, though some sources say he simply had disobeyed an order, sheesh. Regardless after the murder of his family admiral Shi Lang promptly sailed off to defect to the Qing. The Qing were very happy to receive Shi Lang as he held extensive naval experience and had a network of contacts in major trading ports all over east asia. He would become absolutely instrumental to the Qing naval buildup and would emerge late into this story and he held a blood feud with the Zheng family henceforth.   Now the Chinese merchant who gave Koxinga the map, guided the Koxinga's naval force to land on Wei Island and Haliao Island, thereby avoiding the artillery placements within the channel of Taiwan.  Koxinga's forces managed to land at Pengdu Taiwan in 1661 and Koxinga soon led his forces to attack Dutch colonists proclaiming to them "Hitherto this island had always belonged to China, and the Dutch had doubtless been permitted to live there, seeing that the Chinese did not require it for themselves; but requiring it now, it was only fair that Dutch strangers, who came from far regions, should give way to the masters of the island.". They marched to Leurmeng where they fought small groups of Taiwanese aborigines and Dutch resistance. In the bay of Lakjemuyse 3 Dutch ships attacked and destroyed several of Koxinga's junks, but then one of his junks got a lucky shot off exploding a gunpowder supply aboard the Dutch flagship Hector sinking her. The 2 other Dutch warships, were not enough to fight off the large force of junks and had to flee.   Here is an abridged account given by Frederick Coyett, the colonial governor of Dutch held Taiwan about Koxinga's landing. The forces of Koxinga showed up armed with bows and arrows, others had shields and swords. Everyone was wearing coats of iron scales (by the way there is an artist rendition of the soldiers by a contemporary named Georg Franz Muller, worth checking out it looks awesome). The armor allowed for complete protection from a rifle bullet and allowed the wearer great mobility. Their archers were their best troops and their skill was so great it nearly eclipsed that of riflemen. They used shield men to form human walls and Koxinga had 2 companies of “black boys”, many of whom were former Dutch slaves that knew how to use rifles and muskets. They proved quite effective marksmen and caused a lot of harm to the Dutch in Taiwan.    As Koxinga's force charged in rows of 12 men and when they were near enough sent 3 volleys of fire uniformly. The storm of arrows that came forth upon the dutch seemed to darken the sky (a herodotus moment). The Dutch expected their return fire to send the enemy fleeing, but they did not, in fact the Chinese held firm against them and in short time the Dutch realized to their horror that Koxinga sent a squadron behind them and they attacked from the rear. While the Dutch proved courageous at the beginning of the battle, now they were stricken with fear and many Dutch riflemen tossed their rifles without even firing them and began to run. As they faltered and fled, the Chinese saw the disorder and pressed their attack more vigorously. The Chinese force charged and cut down the Dutch and the battle raged on until the Dutch captain Thomas Bedell and 180 of his men were slain.    After defeating the Dutch force when they landed, Koxinga laid siege to the main fortress, Fort Zeelandia using some of his 100 cannons on hand. They outnumbered the garrison there 20 to 1 and the bombardment demolished the roof of the Dutch governors residence. The Dutch return fired from bastion forts killing hundreds of Koxinga's men. Koxinga's cannons proved ineffective against the walls, the Dutch governor wrote that after viewing the alignment of the Chinese cannons, he noticed they were placed quite badly, were unprotected and easy to hit with their own cannons. In the end the Chinese cannons only did some light damage to a few houses. Koxinga was shocked and enraged by the lack of damage to the fortresses walls and decided to give up the bombardment and simply to being starving the Dutch out. On April 4th Koxinga sent his army to besiege the smaller fortress of Fort Provintia, catching its commander Jacob Valentyn and his 140 men, completely off guard. Valentyn had to surrender without putting up much of a fight.   By late May, news of the Siege of Fort Zeelandia reached Jakarta and the Dutch East India Company dispatched 12 ships with 700 soldiers to relieve the fort. The relief force ran into Koxinga's naval blockade and they engaged in battle. However Koxinga had hundreds of war junks and as the Dutch ships tried to fire upon them their aim ended up being too high. Basically of the height difference between the Chinese war junks and Dutch ships, this made aiming the cannons difficult as they cant pivot downwards, so you have to rely upon distance calculations and that in turn is not easy when the enemy knows to just close in on you and are firing upon you. Some of the smaller Dutch ships tried to lure some of the Chinese war junks into a narrow strait with a feigned withdrawal. But as they were doing so, the wind suddenly seized on them, and with only paddles available the Chinese caught up to them and massacred their crews with pikes. It is also alleged the Chinese caught many Dutch lobed grenades using nets and tossed them right back at them, that sounds like a nasty game of hot potato. The Dutch flagship Koukercken was hit by a Chinese cannon after running around and quickly sunk. Another Dutch ship hit ashore and the crew had to run for their lives for Fort Zeelandia. The remaining Dutch fleet eventually scattered and withdrew, all in all they took 130 casualties. By December Koxinga was given reports that the garrison of Fort Zeelandia was losing morale and thus he decided to launch another large offensive, but was repelled again by superior Dutch cannons.    By January 12th of 1662, Koxingas fleet began to help bombard the fort as his ground forces assaulted. With supplies running out and no sign of reinforcements, Governor Coyett hoisted the white flag and began to negotiate terms of surrender, finalizing them by february 1st. By February the 9th the Dutch left Taiwan and were allowed to take their personal belongings and provisions.    Now this siege was honestly a pretty horrible affair aside from the normal war actions. Prisoners on both sides were subjected to some rather gruesome torture. A Dutch physician allegedly carried out a vivisection on a Chinese prisoner and there were reports that the Chinese amputated noses, ears, limbs and genitals of Dutch prisoners. Apparently the Chinese would stuff their mouths with amputated genitals and send the corpses back to Fort Zeelandia, some really messed up stuff. One Dutch prisoner, a missionary named Antonius Hambroek was sent as an envoy to Fort Zeelandia to ask for their surrender, if he failed he was to be killed. Hambroek went to the Fort where 2 of his daughters were residing and urged everyone to surrender, but they did not and thus he came back to Koxinga's camp and was promptly beheaded. Another one of Hambroeks daughters had been captured prior to the siege and Koxinga made her a concubine. Other Dutch women and children that were captured prior to the siege were enslaved and sold to Chinese soldiers. 38 years of Dutch rule over Taiwan had ended and Koxinga would use Taiwan as a military base for Ming loyalists.   The Taiwanese aboriginals played both sides during the conflict. For example when Koxinga's men landed in Taiwan one tribal alliance known as the Kingdom of Middag invited Koxingas subordinate Chen Ze and his men to eat and rest with them only to kill them all in their sleep, allegedly 1500 soldiers. This was followed up by an ambush attack that would cost Koxinga the lives of 700 soldiers. More and more tribal attacks mounted and the brutality pushed Koxinga to offer the aboriginals amnesty and to help get rid of the Dutch. Many of the aboriginals were delighted by the chance to rid themselves of the Dutch and began to hunt Dutch colonists down, helped execute Dutch prisoners and burnt Dutch books used to educate them. Koxinga then rewarded the aboriginals with Ming clothes, made feasts for them, gave them countless gifts such as tobacco, farming tools and oxen and taught them new farming techniques.    Koxinga had a large problem after his major victory, Taiwan's population was estimated to be no greater than 100,000, yet he brought with him almost 30,000 soldiers and their families, so food was going to run out and very quick. Thus Koxinga set to institute a tuntian policy, that being that soldiers would serve a dual role, that of warrior and farmer. All the rich and fertile lands the Dutch held were immediately cut up and distrubed to his higher ranking officers. Much of the aboriginal held territory on the eastern half of Taiwan would also be distributed to Koxinga's men and I would imagine that was a bloody ordeal taking the land. Then Koxinga set his eyes on piracy performing raids against several locations near Taiwan such as the Philippines and even demanded the Spanish colonial government pay him tribute, threatening to attack Manila if they did not comply. The Spanish refused to pay any tribute and instead prepared the defenses of Manila. Koxinga's naval force raided several coastal towns in the Philippines but before he could perform any real sort of invasion, in June of 1662 Koxinga suddenly died of malaria. Koxinga's son Zheng Jing succeeded his father and became King of Tungning. Zheng wanted to continue his fathers planned invasion of the Philippines, but it turns out his fathers little war against the Dutch did not go unnoticed by the Qing.    Back on the mainland, after Koxinga left and sailed for Taiwan, the Qing began to reimplemented the Haijin “sea ban” in 1647. The Haijin had been used in the past mostly to target Japanese piracy. Basically it was an attempt to force all sea trade coming in to be under strict regulation handled by Ming officials. The limited sea trade was to be “tributary missions” between the Ming dynasty and their vassals, such as Korea. Any private foreign trade was punishable by death and as you can imagine all this led up to was an increase in piracy and the formation of many smugglers along the eastern coast of china. The entire idea was to starve out Taiwan by denying them trade with the eastern coast of China. But when the Haijin was reimplemented it led to entire communities along the eatern Chinese coast to be uprooted from their native place and they were being deprived of their means of livelihood. So many communities simply had to get up and settle somewhere else where they could. This sent many coastal areas into chaos. This ironically led countless amounts of refugees from the eastern chinese coast to flee to Taiwan. Then in 1663 the Qing formed an alliance with the Dutch East India Company against the Ming loyalists in Fujian and Taiwan. The Dutch for their part sought the alliance simply to recapture Taiwan.   In October of 1663 a combined fleet of Qing and Dutch attacked and captured Xiamen and Kinmen from the Ming loyalists. Then in 1664 the combined fleet attacked Zheng Jing's navy but ended up losing because it was simply to immense. One of the Qing admirals, a certain Shi Lang, remember that guy, yeah he like I said held a blood grudge against Zheng's family, well he  advised the Qing that the Dutch were only aiding them so they could recapture Taiwan. He said that they did not really require the Dutch naval aid and that he could lead the Qing navy to take Taiwan back on his own. Thus the alliance fell apart.   The Dutch who were probably very pissed off now then began raiding the Zhoushan Islands where they looted relics and killed Monks at a buddhist complex at Putuoshan in 1665, pretty mean thing to do. Zheng Jing's navy attacked them for this, capturing and executing 34 Dutch sailors. In 1672 Zheng Jing would attack the Dutch again, managing to ambush the Dutch ship Cuylenburg in 1672 off the coast of northeastern Taiwan. So a bit of a long lasting war between the Dutch and Ming loyalists remains in the background.    Now from the offset of his enthronement, Zheng Jing actually attempted to reconcile with the Qing, he sought to make Taiwan an autonomous state. Yet he refused their demands that he shave his head in the Manchu fashion nor would he pay tribute to the Qing dynasty. The Qing's response initially as I had mentioned was a policy of trying to starve Taiwan out using the Haijin. This sent the populace of the southeastern coast into chaos and Zheng Jing continued to raid as the Qing really could not stop his larger navy. The Haijin like I said earlier had a disastrous and ironic effect. Soon there was a giant influx of the populace fleeing for Taiwan. Seeing the opportunity, Zheng promoted the immigration heavily and began proclaiming tons of promises and major opportunities for anyone who wished to immigrate to his kingdom. The enticement of land ownership and cultivation in exchange for military service suited many of the immigrant peasants quite fine, I mean for most there was simply no choice. And it was not just peasants who came, a ton of Ming loyalists used the opportunity to flee the mainland from persecution as well. All of this led to quite an enormous boom for Taiwan. A ton of reforms came into effect to meet the needs of the growing populace, agricultural, education, trade, industry and so on. Zheng's main advisor, Chen Yonghua also helped introduce the deliberate cultivation of sugar cane and other cash crops which was further traded with Europeans who helped bring over machinery for mass sugar refining. The sugar economy allowed Taiwan to become economically self-sufficient and a booming relationship sprang with the British. Its funny how the British swoop in and steal all former Dutch things isnt it haha? The Qing tried to thwart all of this with the more intensive Haijin edict, but it only made the situation worse. It was not just Taiwan that was a thorn in their side, the head shaving order had caused a great influx of the populace to emigrate to other places than Taiwan, such as Jakarta and the Philippines. The Haijin and brief Qing-Dutch naval alliance had caused Zheng Jing to intensively exploit the lands of Taiwan and as you might guess this meant running into conflict with the aboriginals. The brutality grew gradually and Zheng's kingdom would put down many aboriginal rebellions against his land grabbing and taxes. A series of conflicts with the Saisiyat people in particular left them absolutely decimated and they lost most of their land to Zheng's kingdom. Zheng Jing's kingdom enjoyed a maritime trade network with the european colonies in the Pacific, Japan and SouthEast Asia.    Now for over 19 years, Zheng tried to negotiate a peace with the now Kangxi emperor, as Emperor Shunzhi died of smallpox in 1661. Despite the peace talks, Zheng never gave up the cause of restoring the Ming Dynasty and one last hooray would occur. Going back to the mainland, when the Qing finally broke the last leaders of the South Ming regime, Li Dingguo, Sun Kewang and Emperor Yongli, they had managed to do this using a lot of Han chinese. It was only logical that they would install more and more Han Chinese to govern the territories that they conquered. Yet by installing certain Han and defected former Ming loyalists in parts of the realm with varying levels of authority led to a few warlords emerging. One was Shang Kexi, a former Ming general who defected very early on in 1634 and one of the most powerful generals to do so. He was given the title “pingnan wang” “prince who pacifies the south” and helped conquer the southern province of Guangdong. When the task was finished he was made governor of Guangdong holding full civil and military authority. By 1673, Shang Kexi was very old and asked permission from Emperor Kangxi to retire and go back to his homeland of Liaodong. Permission was granted and his son Shang Zhixin would take up the mantle of Prince of Pingnan. However, Shang Zhixin and his father would soon be embroiled into a revolt by the actions of others as we will soon see.   Geng Zhongming was a Ming general who served under the Ming warlord Mao Wenlong “the sea king” if you listened to some earlier episodes. Well Geng Zhongming alongside Kong Youde ended up defecting to the Qing and aided in their conquest of the south. Geng Zhongming eventually died and his son Geng Jimao inherited his title of Jingnan Prince (which also means prince of pacifying the south just like pingnang wang) and aided in hunting down Li Dingguo and pacifying the southeast of China. Geng Jimao managed to get both his sons Geng Jingzhong and Zhaozhong to become court attendants under the Qing emperor Shunzhi and married Aisin Gioro women. His son Geng Jingzhong would inherit his fathers titles including the governorship of Fujian province and would become a warlord in Fujian which held a strong naval force.   Wu Sangui who we know quite well was the Ming General who literally opened the door for the Qing to help destroy the forces of Li Zicheng, but this also led to the Qing taking Beijing. Now Wu's career was a lengthy one, he helped defeat Li Zicheng who executed over 38 members of Wu's family, so a large grudge there. For his service against Li, Wu was given the “Qin wang” Prince of Blood title and helped fight the Daxi army in the south alongside Shang Kexi. Wu had the absolutely horrifying job of pacifying Sichuan against the hordes of differing bandit armies and South Ming loyalists. Then Wu became instrumental in the fight against Sun, Li and Yongli eventually defeating them and bringing the far reaches of Yunnan under the Qing yolk. Now the Qing were uncomfortable placing Manchu bannermen so far away in Yunnan or Guizhou and thus the job was given to Wu. He was given the title of Pingxi Wang “Prince who pacifies the West” and control over Yunnan and Guizhou. Wu was granted permission by Emperor Shunzhi to appoint and promote his own officials as well as being given the rare privilege to have first dibs on warhorses before other Qing armies. By that point because of the war against Li Dingguo, Wu already had a large army at his control, around 60,000 men. The Qing were very wary of Wu, but his rule of Yunnan had thus far caused no headaches. Wu inevitably became a semi-independent warlord because of the great distance. All the money he received from taxation within Yunnan and that funds he received from Beijing were spent to expand his military primarily, guess why?    So lets just summarize all of this. As a result of their great aid to the Qing defeating the South Ming regime, basically most of south China was handed over to 3 defected Ming generals.  Basically they were awarded large fiefdoms within the Qing dynasty. Wu Sangui was granted governorship of Yunnan and Guizhou. Shang Kexi got Guangdong and Geng Zhongming got Fujian. Each man had their own military force and control over the taxation and other civil administration of their respective fiefs. In the 1660's each man began to ask for Qing government subsidies to keep them loyal, averaging around 10 million taels of silver annually.  Wu spent several million taels of silver building up his military, up to an estimated third of the Qing governments revenue from taxes. Geng Zhongming was quite a tyrant in his fiefdom and extorted the populace quite harshly before dying upon which his fiefdom fell to his son Geng Jimao and then to his son Geng Jingzhong as I mentioned. Shang Kexi ran a similar tyranny to Geng Zhongming in Guangdong and the combined 3 fiefs emptied the Qing treasury quite quickly. Another large issue was each man simply assumed and expected his feudaltory would be handed down to his offspring, but that was to be decided by the Qing Emperor not them.When Emperor Kangxi took the throne the 3 fief provinces had become financial burdens on the Qing government and their growing autonomous control of each province were becoming a major threat to the Qing dynasty.    In 1673, Shang Kexi sent a memorial to Emperor Kangxi stating “I am already 70 years old and have become weak. I hope I can be allowed to go back to Liaodong, my home place, to spend my old age. In the past I was granted land and houses in Liaodong. I hope that your Majesty will grant the land and houses to me again. I will take some officers and soldiers and old people who have been under me, 4394 households all together, to go back with me. There are 24,375 men and women in all. I hope the department concerned will provide food for all these people on their way to Liaodong”.  Emperor Kangxi replied  “Since you sailed from the island to submit to our dynasty, you have worked very hard and established great contributions. You have garrisoned in Guangdong Province for many years. I know from your memorial that you are already 70 years old. You want to go back to Liaodong. You are very sincere in your memorial. From this I can see that you are respectful and submissive and have the overall interest at heart. I am very pleased about that. Now Guangdong Province has been pacified. I will order the Kings in charge of government affairs, court officials and the officials of the Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of Defense to discuss how to arrange the migration and settlement of the officers and men under you. I will let you know when they have made a decision.”. Oh but there will of course be a catch, for 2 weeks later Emperor Kangxi received another letter ““In the memorial presented by Shang KeXi to Your Majesty he says that he is already old and ill. He asked Your Majesty's permission to let his son Shang Zhi Xin to succeed his title of King of Pingnan. But now Shang KeXi is still alive. There is no precedent that the son can succeed his father's title when his father is still alive. So it is not necessary to consider whether or not to allow his son to succeed his title.”. Emperor Kangxi agreed to this with some stipulations about numbers of military personnel and such.   Then in July of 1673, Wu Sangui asked to be permitted to retire just like Shang Kexi and to be able to “settle down in some place”, the Emperor said he would speak to the court to arrange the migration. Then a week later, Geng Jingzhong asked the exact same thing and the Emperor said he would speak to the court. The court was divided on the issue, and against the majority in the court Emperor Kangxi decided to allow each man to have their wish. Wu Sangui was going to be given land in Guizhou, but he frantically sent word to Emperor Kangxi that he required a larger land because his officers families were many. It was a bit audacious and curious that Wu Sangui began with “settle down in some place” and turned it into “oh but I really need a much bigger place than that”, it was like he was asking for something he knew he could not have.  It turns out, Wu Sangui had assumed when he asked permission to retire that the Qing court would instead try everything they could to persuade him not to retire and to stay in Yunnan. That way they might give him even more autonomy and money thus enabling him to continue building his autonomous state even more. When the emperor said yes to his request it must have been a real shock and to make matters worse for Wu, the emperor immediately began the process of migrating him and his men so he freaked out.    So in 1673, Wu Sangui cut off his provinces connections to the Qing dynasty and began a rebellion under the banner of “Fǎn qīng fùmíng” “oppose the qing and restore the ming”. He was supported by his son Wu Shifan and other Ming loyalists in Yunnan, soon they all cut off their Manchu queues and he sent loyal commanders to garrison strategic passes into Yunnan.  The provincial governor of Yunnan Zhu Guo Zhi refused to join him and so Wu had him assassinated.  By 1678 Wu would declare a new dynasty, here we go again meme, giving himself the title King of Zhou and Great Marshal of the Expedition Army. And thus the Zhou dynasty was born. Wu Sangui ordered all of his followers to cut their Manchu queues and for all the banners to be white, and issued white military uniforms. The next order of business was sending word to Shang Kexi the Prince of Pingnan and Geng Jingzhong the Prince of Jingnan asking them to join the rebellion. Wu Sangui sent his loyal general Ma Bao to command a vanguard and march on Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou. All of Guizhou surrendered without a fight. Soon word got out of the rebellion and the colossal failure of Guizhou to defend itself. Emperor Kangxi immediately ordered the migration of Shang Kexi and Geng Jingzhong to be stopped and began to rally his army to meet the new threat. Generals from multiple provinces were assembled and estimates range quite a lot. Some say 500,000 some say up to a million troops, with the majority being Han Chinese of the Green Standard army were mustered. Emperor Kangxi promised any general who brought him Wu Sangui's head would receive all the titles which Wu had held and any general that brought the heads of Wu's generals would receive whatever titles those generals held, pretty big incentive. Emperor Kangxi also arrested and executed one of Wu Sangui's sons who unfortunately was still in Beijing at the time named Wu Yingxiong.    Wu Sangui's army set out of Guizhou and attacked Yuanzhou of Hunan province. Next Chenzhou, then his army split up taking Hengzhou, Lizhou, Yuezhou and Changsha. Most of the governors simply fled for their lives. Then Wu's army marched into Hubei province attacking Yichang, Xiangyang, Yunyang where he defeated multiple armies. Emperor Kangxi furiously ordered some of his generals to rush to Wuchang as it was strategically important and had to be defended. The southern Qing forces had not been prepared to face the well trained army of Wu Sangui and were falling like dominoes. To make matters worse many rallied to Wu Sangui's cause, such as Sun Yanling, a general in Guangxi. Soon Wu's army was in Sichuan causing havoc, everywhere Wu's army went there were either military defeats for the Qing, retreats or defections.    Then in March of 1674 Geng Jingzhong began a rebellion in Fujian declaring himself Grand General of All the Armies. Soon his forces took Yanping, Shaowu, Funing, Jianning and Tingzhou. Then Geng Jingzhong and Wu Sangui managed to form an agreement that they should combine forces and hit Jiangxi province together. At the same time Geng Jingzhong sent an envoy to our old friend Zheng Jing  the king of Taiwan to come join the party by attacking prefectures and counties across the coast. Soon Geng Jingzhongs forces took Jiangshan, Pingyang, Wenzhou, Yueqing, Tiantai, Xianju and Chengxian. He defeated countless armies, rallied many to his cause and earned many defectors amassing an army of 100,000. Then he set out to attack Shaoxing, Ningpo, Huangyan, Jinhua before marching into Jiangxi province. From there Geng and wu took Guangxin, Jianchang, Raozhou, Kaihua, Shouchang, Chun'an, Huizhou, Wuyuan and Qimen. Thus his forces had hit the provinces of Fujian, Jiangxi, Zhejiang and Anhui. The Southeast of China was in utter chaos.   Meanwhile Shang Kexi notified Emperor Kangxi of Geng Jingzhong's rebellion early. Shang Kexi was loosely related to Geng Jingzhong, his son Shang Zhixin's wife was Geng's younger sister. Now that Geng Jingzhong was rebelling, he knew people would suspect he was going to rebel, but he did not want to. I mean hell the guy is 70 years old, he just wanted to retire. So he asked Emperor Kangxi if he could prove his loyalty by protecting Guangdong Province from the rebels and give his life in doing so. The Emperor was moved by this and ordered more units and money be made available to Shang Kexi for the task. Now remember, Shang Kexi was also the guy who got the confirmation that his son Shang Zhixin would inherit all he had, titles and all.    When Wu Sangui began the rebellion, Emperor Kangxi was 20 years old and Wu assumed he was a “green horn” IE: a incompetant young man with no real experience and thus a push over. But very soon Wu Sangui would be facing the full might of the entire Qing Dynasty and he certainly began to regret his decision to rebel. When his army reached Lizhou he got word that the Emperor had executed his son Wu Yingxiong and his grandson. Allegedly he was eating a meal when a messenger told him this and he exclaimed “The young emperor is so capable! I am doomed to fail”. An odd quote to say the least given the circumstances, but thats how one of my sources put it….I'd rather think he'd shout in grief or something.    Emperor Kangxi dispatched many Generals to help Shang Kexi attack the rebels occupying Yuezhou as Wu Sangui set up defenses there and sent expeditionary forces to march into Jiangxi province. The expeditionary forces took Nankang, Duchang and then Wu Sangui sent more expeditionary forces out of Changsha to hit Pingxiang, Anfu, Shanggao and Xinchang. Emperor Kangxi responded by throwing titles out to countless officials ordering them to suppress all the rebel forces spreading like wildfire, honestly I can't list the mount of Princes that spring up. Countless Qing generals and governors fought and died to the rebel armies. By january of 1675 Emperor Kangxi ordered Grand General Yuele positioned in Yuanzhou to recapture Changsha. Yuele led his forces to take Nanchang, Shanggao, Xinchang, Donxiang, Wannian, Anren and Xincheng defeating countless rebels. When his force made it to Pingxiang they were repelled. At this point Wu Sangui ordered his men to build wooden fortresses to defend cities without natural defenses and to build log barriers to thwart cavalry, log obstacles in the rivers to thwart naval forces and traps everywhere. Then Wu Sangui told his troops he was going to cross the Yangtze River and break the dike near Jingzhou to immerse the city in water. While this was to occur he ordered some subordinates to attack Yunyang, Junzhou and Nanzhang.   In 1676 Wu Sangui's forces approached Guangdong and Shang Kexi was seriously ill leaving his son Shang Zhixin in charge of the defense. Many forces defected to Wu Sangui and allegedly in an effort to save his father, Shang Zhixin defected and became a grand general in Wu's army. Ironically and rather tragically it seems the surrender broke Shang Kexi's heart and he died. In December Shang Zhixin regretted his defection so much he sent a secret envoy to Emperor Kangxi begging to be allowed to defect back over to the Qing and Emperor Kangxi accepted him with open arms right back. Quite a few rebel generals began to defect back to the Qing and the Emperor kept a policy of extreme leniency hoping to win many over without bloodshed. These were after all his subjects and the emperor understood the need to avoid bloodshed whenever possible. Wu Sangui sent forces to attack Ji'an while Yuele made a second attempt attacking Pingxiang. Yuele's forces had destroyed 12 enemy fortresses and killed more than 10,000 rebels before the rebel commander of Pingxiang fled. After taking Pingxiang, Yuele marched on Liling and Liuyang before finally attacking his tasked objective Changsha. Meanwhile Emperor Kangxi also dispatched forces into Zhejiang Province to attack Geng Jingzhong. In 1676 they attacked Wenzhou fighting fiercely and taking multiple fortresses. Despite a fierce month long siege, Wenzhou withstood the Qing and thus they bypassed it to march into Fujian province taking Jiangshan first. Meanwhile Zheng Jing's force arrived at Xinghua Bay to attack Fuzhou, but Geng Jingzhong was at the end of his resources and ended up asking permission to defect to Emperor Kangxi. He asked Emperor Kangxi permission to show his newfound loyalty by attacking Zheng Jing's invading force at Fuzhou. Emperor Kangxi accepted the offer and said he could resume his title of King of Jingnan if he was successful. The forces of Geng Jingzhong, heavily supported by the Qing army sent initially to defeat him mind you, easily defeated Zheng Jing's force sending him packing back to Taiwan. A real game of thrones.    By 1677 Wu Sangui's army were facing stalemates all over the place and Yuele successfully captured Changsha. Then Ji'an fell as many of Wu's men simply retreated. By 1678 Yuele recovered Pinjiang and Xiangyin defeating countless rebels and accepting many surrenders. Then Wu Sangui sent one of his most formidable generals Ma Bao to attack Yongxing and he died in battle failing to take the city. Wu Sangui was 67 years old, 6 years had passed since he began the rebellion. The vast territory he had taken in its peak was declining rapidly. His army was greatly weakened, but despite all of this many of his officials pleaded to him that he should officially declare himself emperor. So he proclaimed his reign title as Zhaowu meaning “demonstrating great military power” of the Zhou Dynasty in march, I guess go big or go home right. He made Hengzhou of Hunan Province the new capital and like all the rest before him began issuing titles and so forth. Then in august he was stricken with dysentery and was so ill he apparently could barely speak. He ordered his son Wu Shifan to come to Hengzhou, and by September 11th he was dead. Wu Shifan decided to take the mantle and chose the title reign of Honghua. When Emperor Kangxi got news of Wu Sangui's death it was like a shark smelling blood in the water and he sent all his armies to crash upon Hunan, apparently the Emperor even considered leading the army he was that eager. Wu Shifan's forces fled for their lives when the Qing armies marched into Hubei, disarray was soon rampant. Soon Yuele's troops marched into Hunan and attacked Wugang which had a fairly stout defense of 20,000 troops. The battle was bloody, Wugangs commander was killed, his troops soon routed and the city fell. The rebel army's morale was low, the Qing took Yuezhou, Changde, Hangzhou. It got to a point where the Qing faced more issues with logistics than they did in the actual fighting of the enemy. By 1680 the provinces of Hunan, Guizhou, Guangxi and Sichuan fell back to the Qing and Wu Shifan fled to Kunming.    Once Wu Shifan was pressed into a corner in Yunnan province the Qing General Zhao Liangdong formed a 3 pronged attack strategy to hit Yunnan. The attack would be performed by Cai Yurong, Zhang Tai and Laita Giyesu. They each marched through Hunan, Guangxi and Sichuan respectfully taking territory as they did. Wu Shifan had no reinforcements and was greatly outnumbered. The Qing generals entered Yunnan and Kunming was besieged for months, but it still held firm. General Zhao Liang proposed they cut Wu Shifans supply route on Kunming lake and this provided quick results. The generals then led a fierce attack upon the city. But before they could capture Wu Shifan he had committed suicide. They decapitated his corpse and sent it back to Beijing. There lies just one more small story to end the tale.   All the way back in 1674 Geng Jingzhong as we know sent an envoy to Taiwan to ask the help of Zheng Jing. Zheng Jing sailed to Siming, the south part of Xiamen in southeast Fujian province. His army then captured Tong'an and marched north to attack Quanzhou which was defended by Geng Jingzhongs army. Geng Jingzhongs men fled the scene after a quick battle and Zheng captured Quanzhou. From there he took Chaozhou, defeating more of Geng Jingzhong's troops, making an enemy out of him. Then in 1675 Geng Jingzhong made peace with Zheng Jing, it seems it was all a misunderstanding and they began to collude. But in 1676 Geng Jingzhong surrendered to the Qing and personally asked to be tasked with defeating Zheng Jing, so perhaps there was something more personal going on between the 2. Well Zheng Jing began the new found war between them by besieging Quanzhou again. The siege lasted 2 months but he was unable to take it. Zheng Jing lifted the siege and instead attacked Fuzhou, but by now Qing forces were crashing into Fujian province. The forces fought for various cities such as Quanzhou, Tingzhou and Zhangzhou. In 1677 Zheng Jing laid siege again for a 3rd time to Quanzhou, but the Qing in the meantime had taken 10 counties back and were overwhelming Zheng Jings armies. He lifted the siege yet again and fled back to Siming, and by 1678 a Qing envoy showed up demanding his surrender. Emperor Kangxi followed this up by sending naval forces to Fujian to attack Kinmen island. Enroute a Qing naval force led by Wan Zhengse attacked Haitan island. During the ensuing battle 16 of Zheng Jing's ships were destroyed with more than 3000 soldiers drowned. Zheng Jing's admiral at the scene, Zhu Tiangui had to flee and Wan Zhengse pursued them. Soon Meizhou island, Nanri island, Pinghai county and Chongwu county were seized by the Qing naval forces. Then land forces and Wan Zhengse consolidated and attacked Zheng Jings forces in Xiamen. They smashed his army there, Zheng Jing tried to flee to Kinmen, but the Qing attacked it simultaneously forcing him to sail all the way back to Taiwan. In 1781 shortly after arriving in Tainan, Zheng Jing died of dissipation on march 17th.    Zheng Jing's eldest and illegitimate son Zheng Kezang was appointed as Supervisor of the state. Now Zheng Kezang was the next in line to take the throne, but this is where that “illegitimate” part comes up. Two political hungry officials hated Zheng Kezang, Feng Xifan the head of the bodyguards and Liu Guoxuan a high ranking military officer. Upon Zheng Jing's death they both began to slandere Zheng Kezang as not being a biological son of Zheng Jing in front of the Queen Dowager Dong. They then launched a coup with the help of Zheng Jing's brother Zheng Cong against Zheng Kezang, killing him and installing his 12 year old little brother Zheng Keshuang on the throne. Some real game of thrones shit. Meanwhile Emperor Kangxi and the Qing court heard about the coup and that a 12 year old emperor was just placed upon the throne and he realized the time was ripe to attack the politically divided and certainly weak island of Taiwan. Then a Qing court official recommended our old friend Shi Lang, the man who had a blood feud with Zheng's family, to command the entire Qing navy against Taiwan. Thus Shi Lang was made commander in chief of the naval force and ordered to take the Pengdu Islands and then Taiwan. Shi Lang rallied 20,000 crack troops and 300 warships for an invasion of Pengdu. Shi Lang also took the time to purchase a number of Dutch made cannons for his bigger ships. Liu Guoxuan of Taiwan knew the Qing would attack Pengdu first and sent a large force there to prepare it's defenses.   In june of 1683 Shi Lang's navy sailed out of Tongshan and captured a few small islands along the way to Pengdu. Now Shi Lang divided his force into smaller fleets before engaging the enemy. He sent one detachment to slip around the planned naval battle and land covertly near Liu Guoxuan's base on Pengdu. Liu Guoxuan was no fool however and placed numerous cannons and troops along the beaches to thwart such attacks. On June 16th the battle of Pengdu commenced and many of Liu Guoxuan's larger ships targeted the smaller fleets of Shi Lang encircled them. Seeing this unfold Shi Lang took his flagship personally in to break up the encirclements. As the battle raged, a stray arrow hit Shi Lang in the eye spraying blood everywhere, but Shi Lang fought on. Shi Lang managed to break an encirclement killing 3000 enemy soldiers and by June 18th captured Hujing island, just southwest of Pendu island proper and Tongpanyu island to its southwest. On June 22nd, Shi Lang organized multiple simultaneous attacks to throw the enemy off balance. He sent 50 warships to hit Jilongyu and Sijiaoshan situated on the west of Pengdu island. Another 50 warships to hit Niuxinwan Bay to attract the enemy's attention as he sailed off personally with 56 warships right through the center to hit Pengdu island proper. The enemy sent all their warships out to meet his separate forces and from 7am to 5pm they fought. The Qing managed to outflank and break the enemies formation, but they fought on tenaciously. In the end the Qing won a battle of attrition as they had significantly more ammunition than the rebel navy whom was forced to resort to boarding ships and melee fighting. Many rebel leaders chose not to surrender and went down fighting to the end in a blaze of gunfire and glory. Over 194 enemy warships were destroyed, more than 12,000 enemy soldiers were killed. Seeing he was going to lose the battle, Liu Guoxuan took his fastest ship and fled back to Taiwan. Shi Lang's detachment that slipped past the battle landed ashore and were met with an onslaught of cannons and arrows from the beaches. However the Qing warships began to tip the scale in firepower breaking open pockets for amphibious assaults and soon the Qing soldiers were breaking through towards Liu Guoxuans base. The Qing defeated the garrison at the base and raised the Qing banner triumphantly.    On july 15th, Zheng Keshuang sent envoys to Pengdu island to offer terms of surrender to Shi Lang. By August Shi Lang accepted their surrender in Taiwan and on August 18th, Zheng Keshuang and all his officers and officials shaved their heads in the Manchu style. They all then positioned themselves to face the direction of Beijing and bowed, Taiwan was now part of the Qing empire. Shi Lang was granted by Emperor Kangxi the title of General of Jinghai, Jinghai meaning “pacifying the sea”. Zheng Keshuang and his highest officials were escorted to Beijing and Zheng Keshuang was granted the title duke of Haicheng   I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  The Qing war for unification was over, of course there would be countless rebellions during the reign of the Qing dynasty, but as for the threat of a Ming takeover that was not a thing of the past. A brand new world was emerging however, as the 19th century was soon rolling in and with it much much more devious trouble. For the century of humiliation was mere decades from commencing its ugly start.  9500

Ten people have been rescued and five others died after a self-built residential structure collapsed in Hunan Province on April 29.

Episode 77:This week we're starting On Practice and Contradiction by Mao ZedongThe two halves of the book are available online here:https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htmhttps://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm[Part 1 - This Week]1. A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire - 01:40[Bonus 1, from the archives]2. Oppose Book Worship[Part 2]3. On Practice: On the Relation between Knowledge and Practice, between Knowing and Doing[Part 3-5?]4. On Contradiction[Part 6]5. Combat Liberalism6. The Chinese People Cannot Be Cowed by the Atom Bomb7. US Imperialism Is a Paper Tiger[Part 7]8. Concerning Stalin's Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR9. Critique of Stalin's Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR[Part 8-10?]10. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People[Part 11?11. Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?12. Talk on Questions of PhilosophyFootnotes:1) 05:17Comrade Fang Chih-min, a native of Yiyang, Kiangsi Province, and a member of the Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, was the founder of the Red area in north-eastern Kiangsi and of the Tenth Red Army. In 1934 he led the vanguard detachment of the Red Army in marching north to resist the Japanese invaders. In January 1935 he was captured in the battle against the counter-revolutionary Kuomintang troops and in July he died a martyr's death in Nanchang, Kiangsi.2) 06:34The subjective forces of the revolution: organized forces of the revolution.3) 09:36Lu Ti-ping, a Kuomintang warlord, was the Kuomintang governor of Hunan Province in 1928.4) 09:53The war of March—April 1929 between Chiang Kai-shek, the Kuomintang warlord in Nanking, and Li Tsung-jen and Pai Chung-hsi, the Kuomintang warlords in Kwangsi Province.5) 09:58The third invasion of the Red Army's base area in the Chingkang Mountains by the Kuomintang warlords in Hunan and Kiangsi lasting from the end of 1928 to the beginning of 1929.6) 16:12The quotation is from Mencius, who compared a tyrant who drove his people into seeking a benevolent ruler to the otter which ‘drives the fish into deep waters'.7) 16:35The Sixth National Congress of the Communist Party of China was held in July 1928. It pointed out that after the defeat in 1927, China's revolution remained bourgeois-democratic in nature, i.e., anti-imperialist and anti-feudal, and that since the inevitable new high tide in the revolution was not yet imminent, the general line for the revolution should be to win over the masses. The Sixth Congress liquidated the 1927 Right capitulationism of Chen Tu-hsiu and also repudiated the ‘Left' putschism which occurred in the Party at the end of 1927 and the beginning of 1928.8) 16:46The statement in brackets was added by the author of the letter.9) 20:44The regime set up in western Fukien came into being in 1929, when the Red Army in the Chingkang Mountains sallied eastward to build a new revolutionary base area and established the people's revolutionary political power in the counties of Lungyen, Yungting and Shanghang in the western part of that province.10) 21:44Stable base areas were the relatively stable revolutionary base areas established by the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army.11) 25:47Chiang Po-cheng was then the commander of the Kuomintang peace preservation corps in Chekiang Province.12) 26:02Chen Kuo-hui and Lu Hsing-pang were two notorious Fukien bandits whose forces had been incorporated into the Kuomintang army.13) 26:15Chang Chen was a divisional commander of the Kuomintang army.14) 26:37Chu Pei-teh, a Kuomintang warlord, was then the Kuomintang governor of Kiangsi Province.15) 26:40Hsiung Shih-hui was then a divisional commander of the Kuomintang army in Kiangsi Province.

Episode Notes:This episode's guest is David Rennie, the Beijing bureau chief for The Economist and author of the weekly Chaguan column. Our topic is online discourse, nationalism, the intensifying contest for global discourse power and US-China relations.Excerpts:I spoke to some very serious NGO people who've been in China a long time, Chinese and foreigners who said that this was the worst time for NGOs since 1989, and the kind of mentions of espionage and national security was a very serious thing. So then I had to make a decision, was I going to try and speak to someone like Sai Lei. Clearly he is an extremely aggressive nationalist, some would call him a troll and there are risks involved in talking to someone like him. But I felt, I'm one of the few English language media still in China, if I'm going to add value, I need to speak to these people.I had a very interesting conversation with a CGTN commentator…He said, I can't tell you how many Western diplomats, or Western journalists they whine. And they moan. And they say, how aggressive China is now and how upset all this Wolf warrior stuff is and how China is doing itself damage. And he goes, we're not, it's working. You in the Western media, used to routinely say that the national people's Congress was a rubber stamp parliament. And because we went after you again and again, you see news organizations no longer as quick to use that. Because we went after you calling us a dictatorship, you're now slower to use that term because we went after you about human rights and how it has different meanings in different countries. We think it's having an effect…One of the things I think is a value of being here is you have these conversations where the fact that we in the West think that China is inevitably making a mistake by being much more aggressive. I don't think that's how a big part of the machine here sees it. I think they think it worked….To simplify and exaggerate a bit, I think that China, and this is not just a guess, this is based on off the record conversations with some pretty senior Chinese figures, they believe that the Western world, but in particular, the United States is too ignorant and unimaginative and Western centric, and probably too racist to understand that China is going to succeed, that China is winning and that the West is in really decadent decline…I think that what they believe they are doing is delivering an educational dose of pain and I'm quoting a Chinese official with the word pain. And it is to shock us because we are too mule headed and thick to understand that China is winning and we are losing. And so they're going to keep delivering educational doses of pain until we get it…The fundamental message and I'm quoting a smart friend of mine in Beijing here is China's rise is inevitable. Resistance is futile…And if you accommodate us, we'll make it worth your while. It's the key message. And they think that some people are proving dimmer and slower and more reluctant to pick that message up and above all Americans and Anglo-Saxons.On US-China relations:The general trend of U.S. China relations. to be of optimistic about the trend of U.S. China relations I'd have to be more optimistic than I currently am about the state of U.S. Politics. And there's a kind of general observation, which is that I think that American democracy is in very bad shape right now. And I wish that some of the China hawks in Congress, particularly on the Republican side, who are also willing to imply, for example, that the 2020 election was stolen, that there was massive fraud every time they say that stuff, they're making an in-kind contribution to the budget of the Chinese propaganda department…You cannot be a patriotic American political leader and tell lies about the state of American democracy. And then say that you are concerned about China's rise…..their message about Joe Biden is that he is weak and old and lacks control of Congress. And that he is, this is from scholars rather than officials, I should say, but their view is, why would China spend political capital on the guy who's going to lose the next election?…The one thing that I will say about the U.S. China relationship, and I'm very, very pessimistic about the fact that the two sides, they don't share a vision of how this ends well.Links:China’s online nationalists turn paranoia into clickbait | The Economist 赛雷：我接受了英国《经济学人》采访，切身体验了深深的恶意 David Rennie on Twitter @DSORennieTranscript:You may notice a couple of choppy spots. We had some Beijing-VPN issues and so had to restart the discussion three times. Bill:Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the `Sinocism podcast. It's been a bit of a break, but we are back and we will continue going forward on a fairly regular schedule today. For the fourth episode, I'm really happy to be able to chat with David Rennie, the Beijing bureau chief for The Economist and author of the weekly Chaguan column. Our topic today is online discourse, nationalism, and the intensifying contest for global discourse power.Bill:I've long been a fan of David's work and the approximate cause for inviting him to join the podcast today was an article on the January 8th issue of The Economist on online nationalism. Welcome David.David:Hello.Bill:So just to start, could you tell us how you got to where you are today?David:I've been a foreign correspondent for frighteningly long time, 24 years. And it's my second China posting. I've been out there so long. I've done two Chinas, two Washingtons, five years in Brussels. I was here in the '90s and then I went off, spent a total of nine years in Washington, DC. And then I came back here in 2018 and I was asked to launch a new column about China called Chaguan, because previously I wrote our Lexington column and our Bagehot column about Britain and our Charlemagne column about Europe. They all have strange names, but that's what we do. And so this is my fourth column for The Economist.Bill:We last met, I think in 2018 in Beijing in what seems like before times in many ways at The Opposite House, I believe.David:And the days when we had visitors, people came from the outside world, all of those things.Bill:Yes. You are quite the survivor, as they say. Although there are advantages to not worry about walking outside and getting sick all the time. Although it's better here in DC now.David:It's a very safe bubble. It's a very large bubble, but it's a bubble.Bill:So let's talk about your article, the January 8th issue. It was titled “China's online nationalist turned paranoia into click bait”. And I thought it was a very good distillation of the surge in nationalists and anti foreign content that is really flooding or was flooded the internet in China. And you interviewed one of the people who's profiting from it because it turns out that not only is it good from a sort of a sentiment perspective, but it's also good from a business perspective.Bill:And that person Sai Lei, interestingly enough, then recorded your conversation and turned it into a whole new post and video about the whole experience of talking to a foreign correspondent. Can you tell us a little about the story and why you chose to write it and just to add the links to David's article and the Sai Lei article will be in the podcast notes.David:So I heard from friends and colleagues, a couple of things in two directions. One was that in the world of private sector media, a couple of reasonably well known explainer sites, popular science video companies had been taken out of business by nationalist attacks. One was called Paperclip, the other called Elephant Union. And their crime in the eyes of online nationalists had been to talk about things which are fairly uncontroversial in Western media, that eating beef from the Amazon or eating beef that is fed soy grown in the Amazon is potentially bad for the rainforest and maybe we should eat less meat.David:But because this was in the Chinese context, that China is the biggest buyer of soybeans, this explainer video was attacked as a plot to deny the Chinese people the protein that they need to be strong, that this was a race traitor attack on the Chinese. And it was outrageous because the West eats so much more meat than China. And so that was one element of it. And I heard that these companies had been shut down. The other was that I'd been picking up that this was an extremely bad time for NGOs, particularly Chinese NGOs that get money from overseas. And we'd seen some really nasty attacks, not just on the idea that they were getting money from overseas, but that they were somehow guilty of espionage.David:And there was an NGO that did incredibly benign work. Tracking maritime and Marine trash, as it floats around the coasts of China based in Shanghai, Rendu Ocean. I'd done a column on them the year before I'd been out with their volunteers. It was a bunch of pensioners and retirees and school kids picking up styrofoam and trash off beaches, weighing it, tracking where it came from and then uploading this data to try and track the fact that China is a big generator of the plastic and other trash in the oceans. They were accused of espionage and taking foreign money to track ocean currents that would help foreign militaries, attack China, that they were guilty of grave national security crimes.David:And they were attacked in a press conference, including at the national defense ministry. And they're basically now in a world of pain. They're still just about clinging on. And so these two things, you have these NGOs under really serious attack, and you also have this attack on online explainer videos. The common theme was that the nationalist attack, they were somehow portraying the country and its national security was a weird combination of not just the security forces, but also private sector, Chinese online nationalists. And in particularly I was told there was a guy called Sai Lei. That's his non to plume who was one of the people making videos taking on these people. He went after celebrities who talked about China should be more careful about eating seafood.David:This was again, sort of race traitors. And he was using this really horrible language about these celebrities who talked about eating more sustainable seafood that they were ‘er guizi”, which is this time about the collaborationist police officers who worked with the Japanese during the World War II. He calls them Hanjian, the s-called traitors to the Chinese race. Very, very loaded language. Went after a group that’s working with Africans down in the south of China, talking about how they faced discrimination. This got them attacked. They had talked also about the role of Chinese merchants in the illegal ivory trade that got them attacked by the nationalists.David:So I thought this question of whether the government is behind this or whether this is a private sector attack on that. There's the profits to be made from this online nationalism struck me something I should write about. So I talked to some of the people whose organizations and companies had been taken down, they were very clear that they thought that was a unholy nexus of profit, clickbait and things like the communist youth league really liking the way that they can turbocharge some of these attacks-Bill:Especially on bilibili, they use that a lot.David:Especially on... Yeah. And so there's this weird sort of sense that, and I spoke to some very serious NGO people who've been in China a long time, Chinese and foreigners who said that this was the worst time for NGOs since 1989, and the kind of mentions of espionage and national security was a very serious thing. So then I had to make a decision, was I going to try and speak to someone like Sai Lei. Clearly he is an extremely aggressive nationalist, some would call him a troll and there are risks involved in talking to someone like him. But I felt, I'm one of the few English language media still in China, if I'm going to add value, I need to speak to these people.David:Yes. And so I reached out to the founder of a big, well known nationalist website who I happen to know. And I said, do you know this guy Sai Lei? And he said, I do, I'll get in touch with him. Sai Lei was very, very anxious about speaking to the Western media. Thought I was going to misquote him. And so eventually we did this deal that he was going to record the whole thing. And that if he thought I had misquoted him, that he was going to run the entire transcript on full on this other very well known nationalist website that had made the introduction. So I said, okay, fine. I have nothing to hide. That's all good. I wrote the column. I quoted Sai Lei. I didn't quote a tremendous amount of Sai Lei because what he said was not especially revealing.David:He was just an extremely paranoid guy. And there was a lot of whataboutism and he was saying, well, how would the American public react if they were told that what they eat damages the Amazon rainforest? And I said, well, they're told that all the time-Bill:All the time.David:It was an incredibly familiar argument. It's on the front page of America newspapers all the time. And so he wasn't willing to engage. And so, I ran this. He then put out this attack on me. It's fair. Look, I make a living handing out my opinions. I knew he was recording me, was it a bit disappointing that he cut and edited it to make me sound as bad as possible rather than running the full transcript. I mean, I interviewed a troll and that was the thing. He attacked me on the basis of my family, which then triggered a whole bunch of stuff that was pretty familiar to me, a lot of wet and journalists get a lot of attacks and it was an unpleasant experience, but I feel that the added value of being here is to talk to people, who The Economist does not agree with.David:And his fundamental problem was that I was using online as a disapproving time. But my line with people like him, or with some of the very prominent nationalists online academics, media entrepreneurs, also with the Chinese foreign ministry, when I'm called in is my job in China is to try to explain how China sees the world. To speak to people in China to let their voices be heard in The Economist. And I absolutely undertake to try and reflect their views faithfully, but I do not promise to agree with them, because The Economist does not hide the fact that we are a Western liberal newspaper. We're not anti-China, we are liberal. And so, if we see illiberall things happening in Abu Ghraib or in Guantanamo Bay or-Bill:DC.David:Being done by Donald Trump or being done by Boris Johnson or Brexit, or Viktor Orbán or in China, we will criticize them because we are what we say we are. We are a liberal newspaper. We have been since 1843. And what's interesting is that online, the reaction was... For a while, I was trending on Bilibili. And that was new. And I take that on the chin. I mean, I'm here, I'm attacking nationalists. They're going to attack back. I think what's interesting is that the online of nationalist attacks were, I hope that the ministry of state security arrest this guy, he should be thrown out of China. Why is he in China? They should be expelled. This guy has no right to be in China.David:I think that at some level, some parts of the central government machinery do still see a value to having newspapers like The Economist, reasonably well read Western media in China. And it's this conversation I've had a lot with the foreign ministry, with the State Council Information Office, which is as you know, it's the front name plate for the propaganda bureau. And I say to them, we are liberals.David:We are not anti-China any more than we're anti-American because we criticize Donald Trump, but you know where we're coming from, but I do believe that if China is concerned about how it's covered, if they throw all of us out, they're not going to get better coverage. I mean, some of the most aggressive coverage about China in the states comes from journalists who never go to China and economists who never go to China. And I think that, that argument resonates with some parts of the machine, to the people whose job is to deal with people like me.David:What I worry about is that there are other parts of the machine, whether it's the Communist Youth League or whether it's the ministry of state security or some other elements in the machine who do also see a tremendous value in delegitimizing Western media full stop, because if you're being criticized and you don't enjoy it. Tactic number one, whether you are Donald Trump talking about fake news, or Vladimir Putin talking about hostile foreign forces, or the Chinese is to delegitimize your critics.David:And I do think that that is going on in a way that in the four years that I've been here this time. And if, I think back to my time here 20 years ago, I do think the attempts to go after and intimidate and delegitimize the Western media they're getting more aggressive and they're trying new tactics, which are pretty concerning.Bill:So that's a great segue into the next question. But first, I just want to ask the nationalist website that you said ran Sai Lei's piece that was Guancha.cn?David:Yeah. And so it's probably not secret, but so I know a bit, Eric Li, Li Shimo, the co-founder Guancha.Bill:Eric actually famous for his TED Talk, went to Stanford business school, venture capitalist. And now, I guess he's affiliated with Fudan, And is quite an active funder of all sorts of online discourse it seems among other things.David:That's right. And I would point out that The Economist, we have this by invitation online debate platform and we invite people to contribute. And we did in fact, run a piece by Eric Li, the co-founder of Guancha, the nationalist website a couple of weeks before this attack, that Guancha ran. And I actually had debate with some colleagues about this, about whether as liberals, we're the suckers that allow people who attack us to write, he wrote a very cogent, but fairly familiar argument about the performance legitimacy, the communist party and how that was superior to Western liberal democracy.David:And I think that it's the price of being a liberal newspaper. If we take that seriously, then we occasionally have to give a platform to people who will then turn around and attack us. And if I'm going to live in China and not see of my family for a very long period of time, and it's a privilege to live in China, but there are costs. If you are an expert, then I'm not ready to give up on the idea of talking to people who we strongly disagree with. If I'm going to commit to living here to me the only reason to do that is so you talk to people, not just liberals who we agree with, but people who strongly disagree with us.Bill:No. And I think that's right. And I think that also ties in for many years, predating Xi Jinping there's been this long stated goal for China to increase its global discourse power as they call it. And to spread more the tell the truth, tell the real story, spread more positive energy about China globally instead of having foreign and especially Western, or I think, and this ties into some of the national stuff increasing what we hear is called the Anglo-Saxons media dominate the global discourse about China. And to be fair, China has a point. I mean, there should be more Chinese voices talking about China globally.Bill:That's not an unreasonable desire, or request from a country as big and powerful as China is. One thing that seems like a problem is on the one hand you've got, the policy makers are pushing to improve and better control discourse about China globally. At the same time, they're increasing their control over the domestic discourse inside the PRC about the rest of the world. And so in some ways, yes, there's an imbalance globally, but there's also a massive imbalance domestically, which seems to fit into what you just went through with Sai Lei and where the trends are. I don't know. I mean, how does China tell a more convincing story to the world in a way that isn't just a constant struggle to use the term they actually use, but more of an actual fact based honest discussion, or is that something that we're just not going to see anytime soon?David:I think there's a couple of elements to that. I mean, you are absolutely right that China like any country has the right to want to draw the attention of the world to stuff that China does. That's impressive. And I do think, one of my arguments when I talk to Chinese officials as to why they should keep giving out visas to people like me is, when I think back to the beginning of the COVID pandemic, I've not left China for more than two years. I've not left since the pandemic began, you had a lot of media writing that this incredibly ferocious crackdown was going to be very unpopular with the Chinese public. And that's because of the very beginning you had people, there lots of stuff on Chinese social media, little videos of people being beaten up by some [inaudible 00:16:26] in a village or tied to a tree, or their doors being welded shot.David:And it did look unbelievably thuggish. And people playing Majiang being arrested. But actually about three weeks into the pandemic, and I was traveling outside Beijing and going to villages and then coming back and doing the quarantine, you'd go into these villages in the middle of Henan or Hunan. And you'd have the earth bomb at the entrance to the village and all the old guys in the red arm bands. And the pitchforks and the school desk, or the entrance to the village with a piece of paper, because you got to have paperwork as well. And you've realized that this incredibly strict grassroots control system that they'd put in motion, the grid management, the fact that the village loud speakers were back up and running and broadcasting propaganda was actually a source of comfort.David:That it gave people a sense that they could do something to keep this frightening disease at bay. And I think to me, that's an absolute example that it's in China's interest to have Western journalists in China because it was only being in China that made me realize that this strictness was actually welcomed by a lot of Chinese people. It made them feel safe and it made them feel that they were contributing to a national course by locking themselves indoors and obeying these sometimes very strange and arbitrary rules. In addition, I think you are absolutely right, China has the right to want the foreign media to report that stuff.David:Instead of looking at China through a Western lens and saying, this is draconian, this is ferocious, this is abuse of human rights. It's absolutely appropriate for China to say no, if you're doing your job properly, you will try and understand this place on China's own terms. You will allow Chinese voices into your reporting and let them tell the world that they're actually comforted by this extremely strict zero COVID policy, which is tremendously popular with the majority of the Chinese public. That is a completely legitimate ambition. And I never failed to take the chance to tell officials that's why they should give visas to have journalists in the country, because if you're not in the country, you can't think that stuff up.David:What I think is much more problematic is that there is alongside that legitimate desire to have China understood on China's own terms, there is a very conscious strategy underway, which is talked about by some of the academics at Fudan who work for Eric Li at Guancha as a discourse war, a narrative war, or to redefine certain key terms.Bill:And the term and the term is really is like struggle. I mean, they see it as a public opinion war globally. I mean, that the language is very martial in Chinese.David:Absolutely. Yeah. And do not say that we are not a democracy. If you say that we are not a democracy, you are ignoring our tremendous success in handling COVID. We are a whole society democracy, which it's basically a performance legitimacy argument, or a collective utilitarian, the maximizing the benefits for the largest number of argument. It's not particularly new, but the aggression with which it's being pushed is new and the extraordinary resources they put into going after Western media for the language that we use of our China. And I had a very interesting conversation with a CGTN commentator who attacked me online, on Twitter and said that I was a... It was sort of like you scratch an English when you'll find a drug dealer or a pirate.David:Now there's a lot of Opium War rhetoric around if you're a British journalist in China. You're never too far from Opium War reference. And for the record, I don't approve of the war, but it was also before my time. So I actually, the guy attacked me fairly aggressively on Twitter. So I said, can you try and be professional? I'm being professional here why won't you be professional. He invited me with coffee. So we had coffee. And we talked about his work for CGTN and for Chaguan and his view of his interactions to Western media. And he said, this very revealing thing. He said, the reason we do this stuff is because it works.David:He said, I can't tell you how many Western diplomats, or Western journalists they whine. And they moan. And they say, how aggressive China is now and how upset all this Wolf warrior stuff is and how China is doing itself damage. And he goes, we're not, it's working. You in the Western media, used to routinely say that the national people's Congress was a rubber stamp parliament. And because we went after you again and again, you see news organizations no longer as quick to use that. Because we went after you calling us a dictatorship, you're now slower to use that term because we went after you about human rights and how it has different meanings in different countries. We think it's having an effect.David:And so I think that this attempt to grind us down is working, although in their view, it's working. And I think that, that ties in with a broader conversation that I have a lot in Beijing with foreign ambassadors or foreign diplomats who they get called into the foreign ministry, treated politically aggressively and shouted at and humiliated. And they say, how does the Chinese side not see that this causes them problems? And I think that in this moment of, as you say, an era of struggle, this phrase that we see from speeches, from leaders, including Xi, about an era of change, not seen in 100 years.David:They really do feel that as the West, particularly America is in decline and as China is rising, that it's almost like there's a turbulence in the sky where these two the two axis are crossing. And that China has to just push through that turbulence. To use a story that I had kept secret for a long time, that I put in a column when Michael Kovrig was released. So, listeners will remember Michael Kovrig was one of the two Canadians who was held cover couple of years, basically as a hostage by the Chinese state security. And fairly early on, I had heard from some diplomats in Beijing from another Western embassy, not the UK, I should say, that the fact that Michael Kovrig in detention was being questioned, not just about his work for an NGO, the international crisis group that he was doing when he was picked up.David:But he was also being questioned about work he'd been doing for the Canadian embassy when he had diplomatic immunity. The fact that that was going on was frightening to Western diplomats in Beijing. And soon after that conversation, I was sitting there talking to this guy, reasonably senior official. And I said to him, I explained this conversation to him. And I said, I've just been having a conversation with these diplomats. And they said, the word that they used was frightened about what you are doing to Michael Kovrig. And I said, how does it help China to frighten people from that country?David:And he'd been pretty cheerful up till then. He switched to English so that he could be sure that I understood everything he wanted to say to me. And he said, this absolute glacial tone. He said, Canada needs to feel pain. So that the next time America asks an ally to help attack China, that ally will think twice. And that's it.Bill:That's it. And it probably works.David:It works. And yeah. So I think that, again, one of the things I think is a value of being here is you have these conversations where the fact that we in the West think that China is inevitably making a mistake by being much more aggressive. I don't think that's how a big part of the machine here sees it. I think they think it worked.Bill:No. I agree. And I'm not actually sure that they're making a mistake because if you look at so far, what have the cost been? As you said, I mean, behavior is shift, but I think it's definitely open for question. I mean, it's like the assumptions you still see this week, multiple columns about how China's COVID policy is inevitably going to fail. And I'm sitting here in DC, we're about to cross a million people dead in this country, and I'm thinking what's failure. It's a very interesting time.Bill:I mean, to that point about this attitude and the way that there seem to be prosecuting a very top down or top level design communication strategy, Zhang Weiwei, who's at Fudan University. And also I think Eric Li is a closer associate of his, he actually was the, discussant at a Politburo study session. One of the monthly study sessions a few months ago, where I think the theme was on improving international communication. And talking about, again, how to better tell China's story, how to increase the global discourse power.Bill:Some people saw that as, oh, they're going to be nicer because they want to have a more lovable China image. I’m very skeptical because I think that this more aggressive tone, the shorthand is “Wolf warriors. wolf-warriorism”, I think really that seems to me to be more of a fundamental tenant of Xi Jinping being thought on diplomacy, about how China communicates to the world. I mean, how do you see it and how does this get better, or does it not get better for a while?David:It's a really important question. So I think, what do they think they're up to? To simplify and exaggerate a bit, I think that China, and this is not just a guess, this is based on off the record conversations with some pretty senior Chinese figures, they believe that the Western world, but in particular, the United States is too ignorant and unimaginative and Western centric, and probably too racist to understand that China is going to succeed, that China is winning and that the West is in really decadent decline.David:And so I think that these aggressive acts like detaining the two Michaels or their diplomatic an economic coercion of countries like Australia or Lithuania. They hear all the Pearl clutching dismay from high officials in Brussels, or in Washington DC-Bill:And the op-eds in big papers about how awful this is and-David:And the op-eds and yeah, self-defeating, and all those things. But I think that what they believe they are doing is delivering an educational dose of pain and I'm quoting a Chinese official with the word pain. And it is to shock us because we are too mule headed and thick to understand that China is winning and we are losing. And so they're going to keep delivering educational doses of pain until we get it. I think they think that's what they're up to-Bill:And by getting it basically stepping a side in certain areas and letting the Chinese pursue some of their key goals, the core interests, whatever you want to call it, that we, yeah.David:That we accommodate. Yeah. The fundamental message I'm quoting a smart friend of mine in Beijing here is China's rise is inevitable. Resistance is futile.Bill:Right. Resistance is futile.David:And if you accommodate us, we'll make it worth your while. It's the key message. And they think that some people are proving dimer and slower and more reluctant to pick that message up and above all Americans and Anglo Saxons. And so they're giving us the touch, the whip. Now, do I think that, that is inevitably going to be great for them? And you ask how does this end well? I mean, I guess my reason for thinking that they may yet pay some price, not a total price, is that they are engaged in a giant experiment. The Chinese government and party are engaged in a giant experiment, that it didn't matter that much, that the Western world was permissive and open to engagement with China.David:That, That wasn't really integral to their economic rise for the last 40 years that China basically did it by itself. And that if the Western world becomes more suspicious and more hostile, that China will not pay a very substantial price because its market power and its own manufacturing, industrial strength, we'll push on through. And so there'll be a period of turbulence and then we'll realized that we have to accommodate. And I think that in many cases they will be right. There will be sectors where industries don't leave China. They in fact, double down and reinvest and we're seeing that right now, but I do worry that there are going to be real costs paid.David:I mean, when I think back to... I did a special report for The Economists in May, 2019 about us generations. And one of the parts of that was the extraordinary number of Chinese students in us colleges. And I went to the University of Iowa and I spoke to Chinese students and you know that now, the levels of nationalism and hostility on both sides and the fear in American campuses, that's a real cost. I mean, I think if you imagine China's relationship with the Western world, particularly the U.S. as a fork in the road with two forks, one total engagement, one total decoupling, then absolutely China is right. There's not going to be total decoupling because we are as dependent as we were on China's, it's just-Bill:Right. Not realistic.David:China is an enormous market and also the best place to get a lot of stuff made. But I wonder, and it's an image I've used in a column, I think. I think that the relationship is not a fork in the road with two forks. It's a tree with a million branches. And each of those branches is a decision. Does this Western university sign a partnership with that Chinese university? Does this Western company get bought by a Chinese company? Does the government approve of that? Does this Western media organization sign a partnership with a Chinese media organization?David:Does this Western country buy a 5g network or an airline or a data cloud service or autonomous vehicles from China that are products and services with very high value added where China wants to be a dominant player. And that's an entirely reasonable ambition, because China's a big high tech power now. But a lot of these very high value added services or these relationships between universities, or businesses, or governments in the absence of trust, they don't make a bunch of sense because if you don't trust the company, who's cloud is holding your data or the company who's made you the autonomous car, which is filled with microphones and sensors and knows where you were last night and what you said in your car last night, if you don't trust that company or the country that made that, none of that makes sense.David:And I think that China's willingness to show its teeth and to use economic coercion and to go to European governments and say, if you don't take a fine Chinese 5g network we're going to hurt you. If you boil that down to a bumper sticker, that's China saying to the world, or certainly to the Western world stay open to China, or China will hurt you. Trust China or China will hurt you. That's the core message for a lot of these Wolf warrior ambassadors. And that's the core message to people like me, a guy who writes a column living in Beijing. And a lot of the time China's market power will make that okay. But I think that's, if you look at that tree with a million decisions, maybe more of those than China was expecting will click from a yes to a no.David:If you're a Western university, do you now open that campus in Shanghai? Do you trust your local Chinese partner when they say that your academics are going to have freedom of speech? And what's heartbreaking about that is that the victims of that are not going to be the politic bureau it's going to be people on the ground, it's going to be researchers and students and consumers and-Bill:On both sides. I mean, that's-David:On both sides. Yeah.Bill:Yeah. That's the problem.David:Yeah.Bill:So that's uplifting. No, I mean, I-David:I've got worse.Bill:Wait until the next question. I think I really appreciate your time and it'd be respective but I just have two more questions. One is really about just being a foreign correspondent in China and the Foreign correspondents' Club of China put out its annual report, I think earlier this week. And it's depressing you read as it's been in years and every year is extremely depressing, but one of the backdrops is really the first foreign ministry press conference of the last year of 2021. It really struck me that Hua Chunying, who is... She's now I think assistant foreign minister, vice foreign minister at the time, she was the head of the information office in I think the one of the spokespeople, she made a statement about how it was kicking off the 100th anniversary year.Bill:And I'm just going to read her couple sentences to get a sense of the language. So she said, and this was on the, I think it was January 4th, 2021, "In the 1930s and 1940s when the Guangdong government sealed off Yunnan and spared, no efforts to demonize the CPC foreign journalists like Americans, Edgar Snow, Anna Louise Strong and Agnes Smedley, curious about who and what the CPC is, chose to blend in with the CPC members in Yunnan and wrote many objective reports as well as works like the famous Red star over China, giving the world, the first clip of the CPC and its endeavor in uniting and leading the Chinese people in pursuing national independence and liberation."Bill:And then went on with more stuff about how basically wanting foreign correspondents to be like Snow, Strong or Smedley. How did that go over? And I mean, is that just part of the, your welcome as long as you're telling the right story message?David:So there was a certain amount of... Yeah. I mean, we also got this from our handlers at the MFA, why couldn't it be more like Edgar Snow? And I fear the first time I had that line in the meeting, I was like, well, he was a communist, if that's the bar, then I'm probably going to meet that one. Edgar Snow went to Yan’an he spent a tremendous amount of time in Mao hours interviewing Mao. If Xi Jinping wants to let me interview him for hours, I'd be up for that. But I would point out that Edgar Snow, after interviewing Mao for hours, then handed the transcripts over to Mao and had them edited and then handed back to him. And that probably would not be-Bill:But doesn't work at The Economist.David:That wouldn't fly with my editors. No. So I think we may have an inseparable problem there. Look, isn't it the phrase that Trump people used to talk about working the refs? I mean, what government doesn't want to work the refs. So, that's part of it. And I'm a big boy, I've been at Trump rallies and had people scream at me and tell me, I'm fake news. And it was still a good thing to meet. I've interviewed Afghan warlords who had happily killed me, but at that precise moment, they wanted the Americans to drop a bomb on the mountain opposite.David:And so they were willing to have me in their encampment. So, the worker of being a journalist, you need to go and talk to people who don't necessarily agree with you or like you and that's the deal. So I'm not particularly upset by that. What is worrying and I think this is shown in the FCC annual server, which is based on asking journalists in China how their job goes at the moment is there is a sense that the Chinese machine and in particular things like the communist youth league have been very effective at whipping up low public opinion.David:So when we saw the floods in Hunan Province in the summer of 2021, where in fact, we recently just found out that central government punished a whole bunch of officials who had covered up the death doll there, journalists who went down there to report this perfectly legitimate, large news story, the communist youth league among other organizations put out notices on their social media feeds telling people they're a hostile foreign journalists trying to make China look bad, to not talk to them, if you see them, tell us where they are. And you've got these very angry crowds chasing journalists around Hunan in a fairly worry way.David:And again, if you're a foreign correspondent in another country, we are guests in China. So, the Chinese people, they don't have to love me. I hope that they will answer my questions, because I think I'm trying to report this place fairly, but I'm not demanding red carpet treatment, but there is a sense that the very powerful propaganda machine here is whipping up very deliberately something that goes beyond just be careful about talking to foreign journalists. And I think in particular, one thing that I should say is that as a middle aged English guy with gray hair, I still have an easier time of it by far because some of the nastiest attacks, including from  the nastiest online nationalist trolls.David:They're not just nationalists, but they're also sexist and chauvinist and the people who I think really deserve far more sympathy than some like me is Chinese American, or Chinese Australian, or Chinese Canadian journalists, particularly young women journalists.Bill:I know Emily Feng at NPR was just the subject of a really nasty spate of attacks online about some of her reporting.David:And it's not just Emily, there's a whole-Bill:Right. There's a whole bunch.David:There's a whole bunch of them. And they get called you know er guizi all sorts of [crosstalk 00:37:15]. And this idea and all this horrible stuff about being race traitors and again, one of the conversations I've had with Chinese officials is, if you keep this up, someone is going to get physically hurt. And I don't think that's what you want. David:And again, I fall back on the fact that I'm a Western liberal. What I say to them is if you tell me that a Chinese-British journalist is not as British as me, then you are to my mind, that's racial prejudice. And if some right wing Western white politician said to me that a Chinese immigrant wasn't fully American, or wasn't fully British, that's racism, right?Bill:That's racism. Yeah.David:And I think that is the really troubling element to this level of nationalism. China is a very big country that does some very impressive things that does some less impressive things and does some very wicked things, but we have every reason to give it credit for the things it does well. And it is not that surprising when any government tries to work the refs.David:And get the best coverage they can by intimidating us and calling us out. I've interviewed Donald Trump and he asked me, when are you going to write something nice about me? I mean, we're grownups, this is how it works, but if they are making it toxic for young women journalists to work in China, or if they are driving foreign correspondent out of China, because their families they're under such intimidation that they can't even go on holiday without their children being followed around by secret police. I think there will be a cost.Bill:But that may be a what the Chinese side sees as a benefit, because then it opens the field for them controlling how the story's told. And then you can bring in a bunch of people or pull a bunch of people out of the foreigners working for state media, hey, the new Edgar Snow, the new Agnes Smedley. I mean, that is one of the things that I think potentially is what they're trying to do, which seems self-defeating, but as we've been discussing, what we think is self-defeating the policy makers, or some of them may see as a success.David:So what I think they're confident of is that being aggressive and making us much more jumpy is a win, but throwing all of us out, I think the people at the top get that, that's not a win because the New York times and the BBC and the Washington post, they're still going to cover China, even if they can't have people in China. And a bunch of that coverage is not going to be stuff that China likes, North Korea doesn't have any resident foreign correspondent, but it doesn't get a great press.Bill:And the other group, of course, but beyond the foreign journalists is all the PRC national journalists working for the foreign correspondent as researchers and, I mean, many of them journalists in all but name because they can't legally be that I've certainly, been hearing some pretty distressing stories about how much pressure they're under. And I think they're in almost an impossible situation it seems like right now.David:Now they're amazingly brave people. They're completely integral to our coverage. And many of them, as you say, they're journalists who in any other country, we would be getting to write stuff with their own bylines. I mean, in incredibly cautious about what we have our Chinese colleagues do now, because they are under tremendous pressure. I mean, not naming news organizations, but the just the level of harassment of them and their families and is really bad. And it's the most cynical attempt to make it difficult for us to do our jobs and to divide Chinese people from the Western media.David:But fundamentally at some level, this does not end well because, and this is not me just talking up the role of the Western media, because I think we're magnificently important people, but at some level there's a big problem under way with this level of nationalism in modern China. I was in China in the '90s, you were in China in the '90s, I think. We remember it was-Bill:'80s, '90s, 2000s. Yeah.David:Yeah. You were there before me, but it was not a Jeffersonian democracy. It was a dictatorship, but this level of nationalism is much more serious now. Why does that matter? Well, because I think that for a lot of particularly young Chinese, the gap between their self perception and the outside world's perception of China has become unbearably wide. They think this country has never been so impressive and admirable. And yet I keep seeing foreign media questioning us and criticizing us. And that just enrages them. They can't conceive of any sincere principle on our part that would make us criticize China that way.David:And going back to my conversation with the online nationalist Sai Lei, when he was saying, well, how would the Americans take it if they were told that eating avocados was bad for the environment? When I said to him, but they are told that. There are lots of environmental NGOs that talk about sustainable fisheries, or the cost, the carbon footprint of crops and things in the West. The two countries are pulling apart and the pandemic has just accelerated that process. And so if you are a Chinese nationalist, not only are you angry about being criticized, but you don't believe that the West is ever critical about itself. You think that the West is only bent on criticizing China. And that gap in perceptions is just really dangerously wide.Bill:And widening, it seems like. I mean, I'm not there now, but it certainly, from everything I can see outside of China, it feels like that's what's happening too.David:Yeah. We need to know more about China.Bill:I agree.David:And report more about China. And I don't just say that because that's how I earn my living. I think it's really, really dangerous for us to think that the solution is less reporting about China.Bill:Well, and certainly, I mean, and all sorts of avenues, not just media, but all sorts of avenues, we're seeing a constriction of information getting out of China. And on the one hand China's growing in importance globally and power globally. And on the other hand, our ability to understand the place seems to be getting harder. And it goes back to, I mean, we just, I think it'll be a mistake if we just get forced into accepting the official version of what China is. That's disseminated through the officially allowed and sanctioned outlets in China. Maybe that'll help China, but I'm not sure it helps the rest of the world.David:And it's not compatible with China's ambitions to be a high tech superpower. China wants to be a country that doesn't just-Bill:That's a very fundamental contradiction.David:Yeah. China wants to sell us vaccines and wants the Western world to buy Chinese vaccines and approve Chinese vaccines. Why has the FDA not yet approved Chinese vaccines? Well, one reason is because China hasn't released the data. You can't play this secretive defensive hermit state and be a global high tech superpower. And China is a very, very big country with a lot of good universities, a lot of smart people. It has every right to compete at the highest levels in global high tech. But you can't do that, if you are not willing to earn trust by sharing the data, or by letting your companies be audited, when they list overseas. They need to decide.Bill:Or being able to handle legitimate criticism. I mean, certainly there has been illegitimate criticism and the attacks on the Western media, I mean, I know the BBC was a frequent target last year. And I think they were able to pull out some errors of the reporting and then magnify it. I mean, it is a struggle. And I think one of the things I think is on the Chinese side, they're very much geared up for this ongoing global opinion struggle. And we're not and we're never going to be, because it's just not how our systems are structured. So it's going to be an interesting few years.David:It is. And it's a tremendous privilege to still be here. And as long as I'm allowed, I'm going to keep letting Chinese people, letting their voices be heard in my column. That's what I think I'm here for.Bill:Okay. Last question. Just given your experience in living in DC and writing for The Economist from here, where do you see us, China relations going? And there is a one direct connection to what we just talked about, the foreign journalists where there theoretically has been some sort of an improvement or a deal around allowing more journalists from each side to go to other country. Although what I've heard is that the Chinese side was been very clear that some of the folks who were forced to leave or were experienced are not going to be welcome back. It's going to have to be a whole new crop of people who go in for these places, which again, seems to be, we don't want people who have priors or longer time on the ground, potentially.David:We think that each of the big American news organizations just going to get at least one visa, initially. And that Is going to be this deal done and it's high time. And you're right, as far as we can tell the people who were expelled or forced to leave are not going to come back. And that's a real tragedy because I have Chinese officials say to me, we wish that the Western media sent people who speak good Chinese and who understand China. And I was like Ian Johnson and Chris Buckley, these people lived for, their depth of knowledge and their love for China was absolutely unrivaled. So, if you're going to throw those people out, you can't complain about journalists who don't like China.Bill:Exactly.David:The general trend of U.S. China relations. to be of optimistic about the trend of U.S. China relations I'd have to be more optimistic than I currently am about the state of U.S. Politics. And there's a kind of general observation, which is that I think that American democracy is in very bad shape right now. And I wish that some of the China hawks in Congress, particularly on the Republican side, who are also willing to imply, for example, that the 2020 election was stolen, that there was massive fraud every time they say that stuff, they're making an in-kind contribution to the budget of the Chinese propaganda department.Bill:I agree completely there. It's not a joke because it's too serious, but it's just ludicrous, hypocrisy and shortsightedness. It's disgusting.David:You cannot be a patriotic American political leader and tell lies about the state of American democracy. And then say that you are concerned about China's rise. So there's a general observation about, if dysfunction continues at this level, then-Bill:No wonder the Chinese are so confident.David:Yeah. I mean, the Chinese line on president Biden is interesting. One of the big things about my first couple of years here when president Trump was still in office was, I'd any number of people in the states saying confidently that Donald Trump was a tremendous China hawk. I never believed. And I've interviewed Trump a few times and spoken to him about China and spoken to his China people. I never believed that Donald Trump himself was a China hawk. If you define a China hawk, as someone who has principled objections to the way that China runs itself. I think that Donald Trump couldn't care less about the Uighurs and Xinjiang. In fact, we know he approved to what they were doing.David:Couldn't care less about Hong Kong couldn't care less frankly, about Taiwan. His objection to the China relationship was that I think he thinks the American economy is the big piece of real estate, and you should pay rent to access it. And he thought China wasn't paying enough rent. So he was having a rent review. I mean, that's what the guy. It was about, they needed to pay more and then he was going to be happy. So he was not a China hawk. What was really interesting was that here in China, officials would be pretty open by the end, took them time to get their heads around Trump. For a long time they thought he was New York business guy. Then they realized that was, he wasn't actually like the other New York business guy they knew.David:And then they thought he was like a super China hawk. And then they realized that that wasn't true. By the end, they had a nail. They thought he was a very transactional guy. And the deal that they could do with him was one that they were happy to do, because it didn't really involve structural change on the Chinese side. Then their message about Joe Biden is that he is weak and old and lacks control of Congress. And that he is, this is from scholars rather than officials, I should say, but their view is, why would China spend political capital on the guy who's going to lose the next election?Bill:And not only the next election but is probably going to lose control of the House, at least in nine, what is it? Nine months or 10 months. So why worry? And that they do and I think, I mean, one of the big milestones will be the national security strategy, the national defense strategy, which in the Trump administration they came out in the December of the first year and then January for the NDS. It's February, we still haven't seen those here. I think certainly as you said, but certainly from Chinese interlock is the sense of, is that they can't come to an agreement on what it should be, the U.S. China policy.David:Yeah. And China has some legitimate concerns. I mean, for example, if you are Xi Jinping and you're trying to work out how ambitious your climate change timetables going to be. How much pain are you going to ask co-producing provinces in the Northeast to take to get out to carbon neutrality as quickly as say, the Europeans are pushing you to do. And part of the equation is America going to take some pain too, or are we going to end up being uncompetitive? Because America's not actually going to do the right thing? Well, Joe Biden can talk a good game on climate as an area for cooperation with China. But if he loses the next election and Donald Trump or someone like Donald Trump wins the White House then if you're shooting pink, why would you kind of strike a painful deal with America if you don't think it's going to last beyond 2024?Bill:Right. You'll do what makes sense for your country and not offer anything up to America because we already have a record of backing out of these deals. That's the problem.David:So that has real world consequences. The one thing that I will say about the U.S. China relationship, and I'm very, very pessimistic about the fact that the two sides, they don't share a vision of how this ends well. There is no end game that I think makes both sides happy, because I think the Chinese vision is America sucks it up and accommodates.Bill:Right. Resistance is futile.David:Yeah, exactly. And the American vision, I think, is that China stumbles, that China is making mistakes, that the state is getting involved in the economy too much. That Xi Jinping is centralizing power too much. And that somehow China's going to make so many mistakes that it ends up to feed defeating itself. I think that's one of the arguments you here in DC.Bill:Yes. It's wishful thinking it's not necessarily based on a rigid rigorous analysis. It seems like it's much more wishful thinking.David:So, that is a reason to be pessimistic about the medium and the long-term. The one thing that I will say based here in China is that when I write really specific color about things like what does China think of the idea of Russia invading Ukraine? And I talk to really serious scholars who spent their lives studying things like Russia policy or foreign policy or international relations, or if I talk to really senior tech people, Chinese tech companies, they do take America's power very seriously. Even though there is absolutely sincere disdain for American political dysfunction.David:I think that America's innovation power, the areas of technology, whether it's semiconductors or some forms of AI algorithms where America just really is still ahead by a long way, the really serious people, when you talk to them off the record, they still take America seriously. And on that Ukraine example, what was really interesting, the prompt for that was seeing commentators in the U.S. saying that Xi Jinping would like Putin to invade Ukraine because this was going to be a test that Biden was going to fail and America was going to look weak. And maybe that would lead Xi Jinping to then invade Taiwan.David:And when I spoke to Chinese scholars, really serious Chinese scholars of Russia, their Irish, it's like, no, no, no. Russia is an economy, the size of Guangdong and they sell us oil and gas, which is nice. But our trade to them is not enough to sacrifice our relationship with America.Bill:Thank you, David Rennie. That was a really good conversation. I think very useful, very illuminating. The links, some of the articles we talked about, the links will be in the show notes. And just a note on the schedule for the sinocism podcast. It is not, I think going to be weekly or biweekly as I thought originally, I'm still working it out, but it will be every, at least once a month. I hope it's the plan, if not, a little more frequent depending on the guests.Bill:So thanks for your patience and look forward to hearing from you. I love your feedback. The transcript will be on the website when it goes live. So please let me know what you think. And as always, you can sign up for sinocism at sinocism.com, S-I-N-O-C-I-S-M.com. Thank you. Get full access to Sinocism at sinocism.com/subscribe

Dive into the nearly forgotten story of missionary Adam Dorward who spent his years in China evangelizing the then-hostile people of Hunan Province.

Adoption, Culture and FamilyOn this episode I was honored to interview Natalie Pappas.  She was adopted from the Hunan Province of China when she was two years old.   I was there on that September day.  My husband and I adopted our oldest daughter from the same orphanage.  A life changing event. Natalie Pappas created the online project Tiger Lily Stories to provide a space and a platform for adoptee voices and stories.  During our conversation, we talk about race, adoption and Asian American identity. Pappas graduated from The New School in 2019 with a degree in Literary Studies.  Natalie is passionate about fashion, photography, and writing and pursues these interests in her creative and professional work.  Tiger Lily Stories https://www.tigerlilystories.com/Support the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/storiesofchange)

Our Luxury Voice in this episode is Cristiano Varotti, Chief Representative of ENIT – Italian National Tourist Board in China. He heads ENIT's newly established Shanghai Office. Cristiano has been living in China for almost a decade, in Changsha first and now Shanghai. He was previously the Representative of Italy's Marche Regional Government, a consultant for both Italian and Chinese enterprises and correspondent for Hunan Province for the General Consulate of Italy in Guangzhou and the Representative for International Exchanges by the Foreign and Overseas Affairs Office of Hunan Province. In this episode Cristiano and I discuss setting up his new office in Shanghai during the pandemic, promoting one of the most visited country in the world, Winter Olympics, mountain tourism and Chinese Social Media. We also touch on Cristiano passion, writing.  About this episode:Company Name         ENIT - Italian National Tourism BoardCompany Website      https://www.enit.it About Infinite Luxury:LUXURY VOICES is a podcast curated by Infinite Luxury Group, a luxury Sales, Marketing, Communications specialist based in Asia. www.infiniteluxurygroup.com Follow us:LinkedIN      www.linkedin.com/in/infinite-luxury-a132271bInstagram    infiniteluxurymanifestoWeChat       InfiniteLuxury-jxm Contact us:WeChat       InfiniteLuxuryEmail           hongkong@infiniteluxurygroup.comPodcast available on iTunes, Spotify, online or wherever you listen to your episodes

A rural county in Hunan Province has made a plan to encourage local women to stay in the area and look for love amongst its many bachelors. But commenters are worried that the authorities could eventually restrict women's ability to move away. Read the article by Jiayun Feng: https://supchina.com/2021/10/07/hunan-county-implores-local-women-to-stay-and-marry-as-rural-bachelor-crisis-worsens/ Narrated by Kaiser Kuo. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

* Artist Salvador Dali had a unique way of occasionally avoiding the bill for drinks and meals — he would draw on the checks, making them priceless works of art and, therefore, uncashable. * The governor of China's Hunan Province banned Lewis Carroll's “Alice in Wonderland” because he believed that animals should not be given the power to use the language of humans, and to put animals and humans on the same level would be “disastrous.” * George Washington died after his doctors removed 40% of his blood (80 ounces) over a 12-hour period to cure a throat infection. While...Article Link

Welcome to the Elevator World News Podcast. Today's podcast news podcast is sponsored by Matot Dumbwaiters and Material Lifts: www.matot.com KONE WINS 77-UNIT CONTRACT FOR CHANGSHA, CHINA, PROJECT KONE has won an order for 77 units that will include elevators, escalators and moving walks for the two-tower Changsha Shengtong Meixi International Headquarters Center, the OEM announced on July 9. Changsha, capital of southern China's Hunan Province, is welcoming the development to its CBD, on the shore of Meixi lake. The mixed-use towers will stand 279.5 m and 215.5 m and provide offices and residences for up to 7,000 people. KONE will supply 26 MiniSpace™ and 17 MonoSpace® elevators, 32 TravelMaster™110 escalators and two TravelMaster™115 moving walks. The contract also includes the company's 24/7 Connected Services predictive-maintenance solution, as well as two years of standard maintenance. The project is being developed by Hunan Shengtong Real Estate Co. and is expected to be completed in 2023. Image credit: courtesy of KONE To read the full transcript of today's podcast, visit: elevatorworld.com/news Subscribe to the Podcast: iTunes │ Google Play | SoundCloud │ Stitcher │ TuneIn

We all want to be the best at what we do. But how do we get there? We look at some of the best to learn their secrets.Chinese medicine and Chinese martial arts—like shaolin kung fu, ba gua zhang, xing yi chuan—are all known for their sages and their masters. Many of us dream of being able to study with someone who is truly a master. Unfortunately, traditional apprenticeship has been on the decline during the 20th and 21st centuries. What can we learn by looking at great masters in music, medicine, cuisine, and more? How can we understand more about ourselves, our trades, and our arts by looking at them?Like what you're hearing?

There's more to food than just calories and macros. Figure out how to pick the best diet for you, and how to get ahead of the next big thing.There are a lot of factors that go into understanding the perfect diet! From social to geographical, economic to cultural, join Dr. James Mohebali as he explores some of these considerations, and helps you understand how to sift through all the contradictory information that's out there about diet. On the way, we take a look at why Italians love tomatoes, how to deal with damp, muggy climates, and whether or not Mexicans are immune to hot chili peppers. Using Feng Shui, terroir, and cultural archeology, we look at some popular diets, like the ketogenic diet, and try to understand what role they can play in healing our chronic diseases and proactively maintaining our health.Like what you're hearing?

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Dongfang Hour China Aero/Space News Roundup! Without further ado, the news update from the week of 25 - 31 January. 1) News of Geely’s satellite constellation (and Qingdao Shanghe Aerospace Technology)According to media reports, the Qingdao SCO Demonstration Zone officially kicked off the Qingdao Aerospace Science & Tech New Industry Project, which is a huge construction project over a land area of over 20,000 m2 and will host the Qingdao Shanghe Aerospace Technology Company.Qingdao Shanghe was founded in August 2020, and is 100% owned by Geespace, a subsidiary of Geely Group based in Zhejiang and that has invested massively in satellite manufacturing. Qingdao Shanghe was registered with an initial capital of 100 million RMB. This seems like a sign of Geely's determination regarding its comms/satnav constellation project in LEO, announced in 2020. While Geely's satellite manufacturing plans have been moving forward rapidly, there had been quite few updates on the constellation project itself.2) Carbon fiber cryogenic tank for liquid oxygen (CALT)Last week we saw CALT announce that it had successfully manufactured a 3.35m diameter carbon composite cryogenic tank for liquid oxygen. This is first in China for a tank with such a large diameter.CALT’s article mentioned a decrease in mass of 30% compared to previous aluminium alloy tanks (1.7g/cm3 vs 2.8g/cm3). The academy also believes that cost can be reduced by 25% compared to previous tank models, and that manufacturing speed would increase compared to metal-based tanks. There will no doubt be further testing to ensure the technology is mature before integrating a Long March rocket.3) Article from MacroPolo about Rising Stars in China’s Political HierarchyGreat piece from MacroPolo this week about the rising stars in the Communist Party apparatus. Noteworthy for the space sector is the fact that several former CASC/CASIC/CNSA high-level people have gone into politics. The article mentions Yuan Jiajun, a former VP of CASC who had completed his PhD at Beihang, worked on Lunar and Mars missions, and is now the Party Secretary of Zhejiang Province, one of China’s wealthiest. Also highlighted is Xu Dazhe, a former high-level manager at CASIC and the CNSA who has since become Governor, and now Party Secretary, of Hunan Province in central China.4) HNA Group enters bankruptcy restructuringHNA Group is a large privately-owned conglomerate based in Haikou (Hainan province), and until very recently, a Fortune 500 company. Its core activities are historically in aviation through its subsidiary HNA Aviation, which in turn handles over 14 airlines, including China’s fourth-largest airline Hainan Airlines.HNA Group came under government scrutiny in 2017, and crumbling under the massive amount of debt it had created, began selling many of its assets. At the climax of the shopping spree in 2017, HNA Group was reported to have accumulated 1 trillion RMB of assets, 500 billion RMB of debt, and have ramifications in more than 2300 companies. This eventually led to the bankruptcy restructuring this week.It’s hard to say how things will go for HNA Group further down the road. 2020 has not been kind to the company, with the coronavirus stifling the aviation business. Yet HNA Group is such a key company to Hainan province, in both economic & employment terms, that it is hard to see the local government letting the situation reach liquidation.---------------------------------------------Follow us on YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter (https://twitter.com/DongFangHour), as an audio podcast, and on our official website: https://www.dongfanghour.com/

Meet Katelyn (our guest AND cohost!) I'm an international adoptee from ZhuZhou, Hunan Province, China, and I'm both the same race and interracial adoptee. I identify as a cisgender, heterosexual woman, and I'm also a follower of Jesus and Christian and I currently work at USF as a college counselor. When I'm not doing that I’m thinking about adoption, talking about adoption, journaling, and running to the beach. "I think when white parents or any parents adopt outside of their race, you are not only adopting that singular child, but actually in an ideal world you're actually kind of adopting that community and you are choosing to care about the plight of that community." "I would love to invite adoptive parents to take a critical and conscious lens when adopting, especially from other countries." Here's some of what we talked about: The narrative that adoptees are "lucky" How race and racism impacted her growing up The white savior narrative (and some ways to resist it) Talking about adoption growing up Finding an adoptee community as an adult Not having information about her birth family The opportunity for racial reconciliation in transracial adoption How her Christian faith has helped her navigate this process Annie's take-aways: Bring a critical and nuanced lens to the adoption industry. Learn and ask questions, and where adoption practices are unjust, call out those injustices. Katelyn's take-aways: Talk about the hard things in adoption. Step into the discomfort for the sake of your child. Shownotes at https://www.listeningtoadoptees.com/episodes/4

Annual Pride celebrations are not common in cities across China, but the city of Shanghai is an exception, where Pride events have occurred for a dozen years.But now organizers say this year’s ShanghaiPRIDE festival is on hold to protect the “safety” of all involved. The rest of this year’s scheduled events in Shanghai are canceled and future events are on indefinite hiatus.Related: ShanghaiPRIDE went on as planned last month. But the fight for LGBTQ rights in China is far from over.Yang Yiliang, a 29-year-old artist in Hunan Province, central China, who is gay, says that being part of ShanghaiPRIDE over the years has been life-changing. “It’s so important to me. ... because it’s like an acknowledgment of who I am and my identity by society. It’s also about connecting with a community.”Yang Yiliang, 29, artist, Hunan Province, China“It’s so important to me,” he said, “because it’s like an acknowledgment of who I am and my identity by society. It’s also about connecting with a community.” In Hunan, Yang says he can’t get galleries to show his work, because curators say the themes are too “sensitive.” Yang says ShanghaiPRIDE has offered him a platform and a greater audience. This year, Yang’s pieces, a mix of traditional folk art papercuts with LGBTQ themes, hang on display at an art gallery on a downtown Shanghai street. The Pride celebration that began in May already included a rainbow bike ride, a Pride run, live storytelling, a job fair and, of course, some great parties, although the crowds this year were smaller than usual because of social distancing restrictions. It seemed like a real achievement that organizers were able to put on ShanghaiPRIDE — even during a pandemic. Little did participants know that this year’s events could be the last. Related: Thailand set to legalize LGBTQ unions, a rare step in AsiaIn China, homosexuality is no longer considered a crime or a mental illness. But there is no marriage equality and LGBTQ people still face many challenges. For more than a decade, ShanghaiPRIDE stood out as an international event that attracted sponsors like Budweiser and Nike, and with activities hosted at foreign consulates. It was organized by a team of Chinese and foreign volunteers and the festival helped boost Shanghai’s reputation as China’s most international and open-minded city. Related: New security law in Beijing targets protesters So, the recent announcement that organizers were suddenly calling it quits was shocking and saddening to many. “Really, they’re doing such positive work,” Yang said, “and they didn’t break any rules. I don’t understand why they’re stopping it.”Organizers have been careful not to reveal too many details in their note titled “The End of the Rainbow,” on their website. But in a separate Facebook post, co-founder Charlene Liu wrote that the decision to cancel is "to protect the safety of all involved." Organizers did not offer further explanation.  Dear Friends & Pride Supporters, In a short moment, we will be making a special announcement to the world that we will...Posted by Charlene Liu on Thursday, August 13, 2020Last month, however, Liu told The World that pressure from authorities was nothing new.  “Having venues closed down on us is very common. Every year, we face the same issue. And we always have to come up with a Plan B, a Plan C, or Plan D,” she said.Authorities have reportedly called in Pride organizers for “tea.” In China, that’s shorthand for being questioned by police and can mean anything from a warning to a lengthy interrogation.  There’s also been talk about whether growing tensions between the US and China have something to do with all this. But Yang Yi, a media professional who attended ShanghaiPRIDE this year with his boyfriend, says it’s about a lot more than that. “In my understanding ... it’s not just about foreign countries and China. It’s more about what’s happening here. It could be also a signal that Chinese authorities are changing their attitude about the LGBTQ community.”Yang Yi,  media professional who attended ShanghaiPRIDE this year with his boyfriend“In my understanding,” he said, “it’s not just about foreign countries and China. It’s more about what’s happening here. It could be also a signal that Chinese authorities are changing their attitude about the LGBTQ community.”He adds that all the foreign involvement in ShanghaiPRIDE might have protected the event in the past. But now, that could be seen as a liability. Lin Xin, one of the volunteers from this year’s Pride says he’s not surprised that restrictions on civil society are tightening. “Actually, in China, this kind of reaction from the government is quite normal. ... Of course, it makes me very sad, but it happens a lot here. I think this is our right to hold this kind of event.”Lin Xin, ShanghaiPRIDE volunteer“Actually, in China, this kind of reaction from the government is quite normal,” he said. “Of course, it makes me very sad, but it happens a lot here. I think this is our right to hold this kind of event.”Despite the cancelation of ShanghaiPRIDE, people in the LGBTQ community here are not giving up all hope. Liu, one of the co-organizers, recently sent out a social media message that says: “Keep believing that love wins, keep being proud, keep supporting each other.” 

In the centre of China’s capital city, Beijing, lies a corpse that no one dares remove. It’s been 44 years since Mao Zedong’s body was laid to rest in the grandiose Chairman Mao Memorial Hall. He may be gone but he is not forgotten. To some, he’s the father of modern China. To many others, he’s a sadistic thug - a man willing, even happy, to sacrifice millions of lives in pursuit of power and economic dominance. Mao Zedong is born in Hunan Province in 1893. Growing up on his father’s farm, he consumes books and ideas. He becomes a devoted left-wing activist. Mao’s rise to the top of the Communist Party is littered with violent outbursts, setting the tone for the decades to come. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a true risk-taker, Becky spent most of her twenties and early thirties in China. By living in four different cities and three different provinces, she uncovered her true self sharing, “Continually moving teaches you a lot about yourself - for better or worse. But with each one I was able to fine tune, to hone, what was important to me in a career, in a living environment and even regarding the people I want to work with” Becky opens up about the vulnerability and fear that can be experienced by all when forced into uncomfortable situations that ultimately help you to discover who you really are.Rebecca “Becky” Nelson is the Assistant Director of International Recruitment and Admissions for Northern State University, Aberdeen, SD. She is professionally fluent in Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. Her most recent experience was as an English Foreign Language teacher for Weilanhaian Kindergarten, attached to Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, Beijing Normal University. Becky had held multiple international positions leading to a rich, diverse background. She was Account Manager/Trainer for Sino Associates in Shenzhen, and Client Executive for Burson-Marsteller in Shanghai. Additionally she was an Operations Manager for Dianhuo International Education Consulting, Changsha, Hunan Province and for Guangcheng International Education, People’s Republic of China. She served as an Assistant Field Director and Volunteer Oral English Teacher for WorldTeach, Changsha and Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province People’s Republic of China.Becky has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Augustana University, South Dakota, 3 summers of Intensive Immersion College course from Beloit College, Wisconsin and completion of Critical Foreign Language Programs for 1st, 2nd and 3rd year Mandarin Chinese from Fudan University, Shanghai, China.

A leaked document obtained by The Epoch Times shows that the situation in China’s Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, is now “out of control.” The four-page warning letter from provincial authorities in China accuses the local government in Harbin for its handling of the virus, and notes outbreaks have spread through villages and cases are now at uncontrolled levels. The leaked document gives additional insights into the CCP’s ongoing cover-up of the real situation in China as it faces the virus outbreak—and comes at an important time when the CCP is planning to loosen restrictions on international travel. Experts warn that a “second wave” infection in China is on the horizon, and already the regime has begun locking down residential compounds and restoring restrictions soon after attempting to end quarantines. And in Changsha City, Hunan Province, local officials have released a new phone app that allows people to report other people for violating requirements on face masks and other crimes. The app gives people points and prizes for reporting others, and some elderly residents are saying it reminds them of the tyranny they faced under the CCP’s Cultural Revolution. These stories and more in this episode of Crossroads.

“Saving People Is the Basis of Fa-Rectification Period Cultivation,” by a Falun Dafa practitioner in Hunan Province. An experience sharing article from the Fifteenth China Fahui on the Minghui website.

In Session 82, I chat with Beth McKee, wearer of innumerable hats! According to her LinkedIn profile, she holds the following positions:Director of Rehabilitation Services at Guangxiu International Children's CenterCEO of ABA Consulting InternationalBrand Ambassador for BehaviorMeIn this episode, we discuss how Beth got her start in ABA, how she began working in China, and how she is currently scaling services in the Hunan Province region in a sustainable and ethical manner.As we discussed in the show, there are not a lot of BCBA's in China. If you don't believe me, check out this map Beth put together:We also discuss what she does when she's not practicing in China, highlighting in particular, her work with BehaviorMe. Beth often posts lots of pictures of her ABA adventures, so if you'd like to follow along, check out her Instagram (@bethmmckee).This podcast is supported by: HRIC... Your new career path starts here. Let Barb Voss find you your dream job, or, if you're an agency, let her find you your dream candidate! Let her 30 years of recruiting experience work for you. If you're interested in learning more, email her for a confidential chat.Essential for Living: A Communication, Behavior, and Life Skills Curriculum, Assessment, and Practitioner's Handbook. From now through 6/1/2019, get free shipping on all purchases using offer code EFLBOP0501.Lastly, Remote Fieldwork Supervision for BCBA Trainees, the book I co-wrote with Dr. Lisa Britton, who is an expert in providing high quality distance based supervision, is now out.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Todd: So, Phil, I'm thinking about going to China and I'm really into nature. I love wildlife. Can you recommend anything to me?Phil: The best thing I did in China was go through Zhang Jia Jie National Park. That's Hunan Province, and if you like nature, that's really highly recommended. It's a UNESCO site. It's easy to find on the internet, but it's just craters, gorges, trees sticking out of really strangely shaped hills, lots of caverns and very very few people there. It was empty when I was there. I had never heard of it before. I had just been recommended by a tour guide. It was spectacular. If you like nature and like hiking it will definitely give you a workout and you'll take a lot of pictures.Todd: Wow, well, how big is this park?Phil: Good question. I didn't see the whole thing, and I spend three days there walking different parts every day, so I really don't know the size of it except that it's massive. So you just went hiking and then you camped overnight, or did you just hiked for the day?Phil: Just day hikes, the tour I had been organized with had rented us a hotel, just stayed in the hotel, slept there at night, and walked most of the day.Todd: Uh-huh. Did you see any wildlife?Phil: Some insects and some butterflies, but no, nothing, no mammals, nothing like that.Todd: Was the, were the trails steep?Phil: Yeah, but most of them do have stairs so, regardless of your fitness level I don't think it would be very difficult for anybody to, some people might be a bit slower than others but you should be able to make it up alright.Todd: So, where is this again? You said in Hunan Province!Phil: I believe it's North-Western Hunan Province.

Welcome to the 37th installment of the Caixin-Sinica Business Brief, a weekly podcast that brings you the most important business stories of the week from China's top source for business and financial news. Produced by Kaiser Kuo of our Sinica Podcast, it features a business news roundup, plus conversations with Caixin reporters and editors. This week, we learn about a man in China who was awarded 1.9 million yuan ($301,796) in compensation last week after being wrongfully convicted of molesting dozens of women last year. We explore some new data released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), which suggests that the country had 772 million internet users by the end of 2017 and that 97.5 percent of them used mobile phones to surf the web. We hear about the news that Hong Kong's legislature has voted to completely end the city's ivory trade by 2021, weeks after the Chinese mainland's ban took effect in January. On the topic of Hong Kong, we also note that the city's property market is on fire, and it's only expected to get hotter. We hear good news from Xiaomi that sales for the smartphone maker surged in last year's fourth quarter as the company extended its comeback. We cover some environmental protection workers in Hunan Province who were found to be using mist cannons to water down pollution readings in two recent cases. In addition, we chat with Caixin Global reporter Coco Feng about the latest in livestreaming — a game that people are playing for cash prizes that's really giving a jolt to livestream sites. We also talk with Doug Young, managing editor of Caixin Global, about Alibaba Group Holding's announcement to purchase a 33 percent stake in fintech affiliate Ant Financial Services Group, and Baidu, which has been sued by news aggregator Jinri Toutiao for unfair competition as the pair's battle for advertising market share intensifies. We'd love to hear your feedback on this product. Please send any comments and suggestions to sinica@supchina.com.  

Listen Here: iTunes | Overcast Subscribe to my Monday Musings Newsletter to Keep Up with the Podcast Tyler Cowen is an economics professor at George Mason University. He runs the Mercatus Center, which bridges the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. He blogs every day at Marginal Revolution, writes for Bloomberg, and hosts his own podcast called Conversations with Tyler. He writes about economics, arts, culture, food, and globalization.   As I prepared for this episode, I settled on three things that I wanted to focus on: how Tyler thinks about travel, the rise of China and India, and how he learns so much. Enjoy this exploration of knowledge and culture, and I hope you laugh with us along the way.  I particularly recommend Tyler’s most recent book, Stubborn Attachments. Transcript David:             Tyler Cowen, welcome to the North Star. Tyler:              Thank you for having me. David:              So tell me a little bit about where you grew up in northern New Jersey. What was growing up like for you and what were you into as a kid? Tyler:              I was born in Kearny, New Jersey, Hudson county, which was a blue collar town, and my father climbed some kind of career ladder from having been bankrupted at thirty, to being upper, upper middle class, so I caught different parts of that income stream. I went to a great high school where I had four or five close friends who were super smart and had a blast. We were like a nerd fest before nerds were cool and I learned something every day but not from the teachers. I loved it and I just knew New York City. David:              Well, let's dive into it. I think that one thing that's really interesting about the Internet is I like to say it rewards obsession in a way that the world didn't use to and I think a byproduct of that is nerd culture is, is cool now. Tyler:              You know, I specialized in the style of learning before there wasn't an internet and then when the Internet came along, I feel it made me like 20 times more productive. So I'm very lucky to have gotten this extreme productivity boost at about age 40, which is very rare in careers. There are people who might have some kind of productivity turning point when they're 29 or 22, but to get it at age 40, it's given my life a very different trajectory. David:              So I know you wrote a book about that, but talk about what was that productivity boost like, how do you think about productivity, and how did that boost manifest itself? Tyler:              Well, I worked very hard for years at trying to absorb more information and absorb it quickly and order it effectively and when the way you do that is driving around to used bookstores and carry used books home and read them, well, that's a wonderful thing to do, but when you can just go to your iPad or your laptop and whoosh, it's all there, you're going to do a lot better. Tyler:              Whereas people who say do research, they've been made more productive by the Internet in other ways, but they're less concerned with absorbing information. So I feel I've gotten a relative gain compared to many other people. David:              So does that mean that you're hopping around between different subjects? Like if I go on marginal revolution, I could go from traveled economics to then yesterday, right, about North Korea and America. So are you hopping around or how has that style of learning changed over the years? Tyler:              I have long-term study plans, like part of my long-term study plan is to understand India and China much better. So that's kind of a 10 year project that I'm always in the middle of, but of course using the Internet to help me makes it much easier. Plus travel, travel being a key to learning. We'll get back to that. Uh, and then during the day I just try to keep up with the flow, the flow of good articles and new ideas. Tyler:              And you know, the flow always beats me. But you wake up at seven, you go to bed at 11:00 PM, there's interruptions, you exercise, you eat, but the day is the flow, the flow is your day, like it or not. David:              Dodging bullets and trying to survive. So there was analogy I got a couple months ago of if, if you're learning is a ship, when you try to steer something for long-term, so say that you want to learn about India in the next 10 years. The advice that I got which I thought was quite good was just steer your ship. So change your twitter feed, change your social streams one or two degrees. How do you think about it? Tyler:              I view myself as a prisoner of my passions. So what helps me is to be very motivated to do what I do. So I don't sit down and strategize like what's my optimal career plan? Tyler:              I just think what'll keep me involved and I figure they kind of compound interest on that learning will just accumulate and as long as I'm having fun, I'll stay motivated like way past other people and that's going to go well for me. So it's almost a deliberate absence of strategy except for motivating me. Compounding fuels success in almost anything. Albert Einstein once called it the 8th wonder of the world. pic.twitter.com/1QcE9Q1hsU — ᴅᴀᴠɪᴅ ᴘᴇʀᴇʟʟ ✌ (@david_perell) October 23, 2017 David:              What are those core passions? Tyler:              Travel of course, food, just social science and generally walking through the world on a given day and you see things like you go to Barnes and Noble, they offer like a loyalty card, buy more books with us, we'll give you a discount and you think, well, why are they doing that? How does that make economic sense? And you want to try to figure it out so you just want to try to figure things out. It's almost a Sherlock Holmes like game and there's always more and more and more and more and more and it drives you crazy, but it's fun. David:              What is it about China and India in particular that appealed to you? Tyler:              Obviously they're two highly populous countries. The US could have a billion more people and we'd still be, you know, the third most populous country in the world. China now by at least one measure has the world's largest GDP and I'm an economist. India is probably headed to having the world's largest GDP. So it does go back and think, imagine you're a British person in 1910, like what should you study? Where should you travel? Well, the United States. To complain that you don't like the pollution or not all the food is what you expect. It's irrelevant, right? You go to the United States, if you don't, you're kind of a dummy. So for me right now, China, India, that's like the United States in 1910. I feel obliged to learn it more by obligation, but it's fun. It's also a passion. David:              So when you're going about learning something like China, India, of course you'd go to the Bloomberg New York Times, but I think that there is, to back to nerd culture, there are probably certain sections of the Internet of the world that will give you a very rich experience that the average person wouldn't get. David:              You seem to be very good at that. How have you been thinking about studying China in India in a way that most people wouldn't think about? Tyler:              China and India I consider hard to learn because when you read about their histories, things don't fall into intuitive categories that maybe they do for Chinese people for instance, but all the different dynasties, they tend to blur together. You could read the same Chinese history book a bunch of times in a row and at the end you're still confused and you don't really know how to place it all, so to pick some side areas, so for me, Chinese food or Indian classical music or certain features of Chinese geography or ethnic regional culture and to learn those well and just keep on attacking the elephant from all these different sides rather than just, "Oh, I'm going to sit down and read this book on Chinese history.". Tyler:              That tends not to work. It works really well for like Paris or the Florentine Renaissance, but for unfamiliar parts of the world and I look for these sideways in the door. David:              Well, let's dive into China first. Where in China have you been and what have the really striking experiences been for you during your travels set? Tyler:              My goal is to go to all the provinces in China in a significant way and not just putting a toe in. I'm past the halfway point. My favorite part of China is the west and the southwest, especially Yunnan province. It's highly exotic. It's about half regional minorities. That has some of China's best food. It's extremely reasonably priced that has remarkably little pollution by Chinese standards. People are very friendly, uh, there are actually quite pro-american because of the history of America. Helping them out in the war against Japan is just amazing fun. Tyler:              I think right now it's probably the best trip in the world is to go to western China. David:              Wow. So western China and eastern China, of course, because we're just talking about GDP, it seems like most of that would be concentrated in eastern China. So let's start with western China. What is it about it that makes it so interesting and is it authentic to what's happening in China because it is so different demographically. Tyler:              Authentic is a tricky word. So if you go to Oregon is not authentic America. Well yeah, but it's not typical either. Nor is New Jersey. So southwestern China, it's just accessible and it's fun. So Beijing I love. It's fantastic. Everyone should go multiple times, but in some ways it's a tough slog. A lot of the city is ugly. The pollution can be awful and it's so large. It's not really walkable for the most part, although it's walkable within neighborhoods. Tyler:              You can go to Beijing and think you don't really like China. That's the wrong impression. So I would say Udon, it's like this backdoor into China and it will open up ways of thinking about China and then when you go to Beijing you'll like Beijing a lot more. So you know, to get to Udon, you probably have to go through Beijing to fly there. So yeah, stop in Beijing for a day, but find the back doors that get your passions and that's going to be western China. David:              And now in terms of what I would consider, I don't know if this is totally true, but that's how I model China. There are four big mega cities. You know there's, there's the manufacturing center, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. Can you talk about the differences between them? Tyler:              Well, Guangzhou and Chongqing are also mega cities.  Some people believe Chongqing, which now has been made its own province is bigger than any other locality in China. We don't even know because there are so many people who are within China, in essence, illegal migrants. We're not sure how many people are are there. The different parts of China until recently have not been economically integrated, so they have cuisines that are quite unlike each other, maybe more unlike each other than different European cuisines. Visually, some parts will look the same because these mega cities have been built up recently using more or less common patterns so you can have the deceiving impression that you're going to the same place over and over again, even though you're traveling to many parts of China, but European say that about the US often like "Oh, the whole country feels the same." If you live here, you know, it's not true, right? There aren't really significant differences. Tyler:              So to go to Hunan Province or to go to Shenyang in the northeast, which is near North Korea, or go to, you know, Chengdu in Sichuan and forgive all my pronunciations which are not proper Chinese. Uh, you're seeing much more diversity than anything you're likely to do in either Europe or the US. You're seeing what's now the world's most important country. Again, I can't stress how favorable the prices are. You can stay in a five star luxury hotel in most parts of China other than Beijing or Shanghai for less than $100 a night and it will be, you know, a wonderful quality experience and the best food in the world, you know, a meal will never have to cost you more than $20 unless you order a highly unusual dish like shark fin soup. So if you're on any kind of budget, there was no reason not to go. Tyler:              Crime is close to zero for women overall it's quite safe. I mean everywhere it has some problems, but as the world goes, one of the best areas to travel in solo if you're a woman. The main reason not to go is air pollution. But again in the west that's a much smaller problem. David:              Right. I was reading that there have been 16,000,000 new bikes installed in China in the last year and a half and, and a lot of people are saying that the changes in transportation there may do something at least to help boost the air pollution, which I thought was interesting, but I want to dive into infrastructure. How has being in China, uh, changed the way that you think about infrastructure and sort of the way that you think about how development happens? Tyler:              Infrastructure is their specialty. They have, what is one of the world's two or three best train systems given how large the country is, that's important. A remarkable thing about traveling and mainland China is you can wake up in the morning and one city and be in almost any other part of China the same day just by taking a train trip and you'll see amazing things on the way. But in terms of planning your journey, everything is within a day without having to mess around with flights and with flights, you don't see what's in between. So you can go like Beijing to Shiyan see the terracotta warriors, that's maybe about six hours. So there's this remarkable sense of freedom you have because of the infrastructure. Along so many dimensions, now they are probably more innovative than we are. And to see that is impressive, we Americans are so complacent and smog. We think where the world's innovators, the Europeans lag behind true on average, but China does something like the payment system. Tyler:              There's this way quicker and much better and you'll come back here and curse, like having a, you know, stick your chip in the thing and it doesn't always work. They're rebuilding their world in some ways. They're outdoing us. David:              In terms of innovative. How do you define innovative and in what sense do they have an advantage by by not having had the PC and being able to jump straight to sort of a mobile first world? Tyler:              In some cases, they're just not locked into older systems as you mentioned. Also, this is more disturbing. We should be bothered by this by having less rule of law. They can just "do things and get them done" and that's not always a good thing. A privacy law. They don't have the concerns you would have in Europe or the United States, but a Chinese payment typically is you take out your smartphone, you scan a qr code, it can be done in a second and a half. Tyler:              The error rate seems to be very low. Uh, it's processed perfectly well. It's cheaper, better, quicker and more convenient than what we do and they beat us and we're not really catching up. And we need, uh, to absorb that lesson for the first time maybe ever. But at least for a long time, the US now has a peer country. Like Soviet Union was never that peer, only with weapons were they a peer. China in terms of creativity and GDP. Arguably right now is a peer. You ought to go and learn from your peer, right? How can you not do that? David:              Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I was talking to a friend last night. I think Hong Kong might be a good place or Shanghai might be a good place to spend a couple of years, but I want to talk about travel in terms of how do you think about travel? David:              So I'll be honest, I did a euro trip recently and I didn't get quite the experience that I wanted because before we had never really come to a consensus on what does travel mean and it's not something that a lot of younger people, at least in my, in terms of my friends really think about. So how do you think about travel and what are you looking to do when you do travel? Tyler:              I like to go weird places. So I did a European trip this summer. It was in August. I went to Macedonia. The country where people hardly ever go. Most of the tourist are either Russian or Serbian. Uh, but certainly not many Americans are there. Again, it's completely safe. Prices are very favorable. I had perfect weather, beautiful sights, tenth century monasteries, all kinds of sculpture. Remarkably good cheeses, breads and meats, wonderful food, wonderful lake fish. A lot of history. A lot of geopolitics you understand much better why the Balkans are messed up and just like how Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo fit together together. Tyler:              I've tried reading that in books. I can't grasp it. I go there, but the mix of going there and the books, somehow it all works and you see this country where the politics are so different from what we're used to in Europe. You just again have to reexamine everything. So I say to people like, go weird, like yes, at some point you should see Paris, but if all you do is see Paris, maybe you'll be a little bored. Where did you go? David:              In Europe? Tyler:              Yeah. David:              We went to Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, and Budapest. Tyler:              You should have seen Paris! Those are all the same, it's like an airport shopping mall. David:              I couldn't agree more and exactly. And then, so over the new year's I was in Chile. Tyler:              One of my favorites by the way.   David:              So my dad is a total nut. And so what we did was, it was new year's day and we went to go see some hieroglyphics up in the Atacama desert in the northern part of the country. It's the driest place in the world. Tyler:              And one of the best trips you can take. David:              Yes, it was wonderful. So it's new year's day and we'd go to the person at the front of the hieroglyphics and we say at where's the closest place to get lunch? And he said, it's new years day, it's all closed. So he said, but I have a friend, she can cook you food. So we go into this little town, all adobe houses, just a gravel streets. And this woman, Sherry and her husband had left her. She was quite lonely unfortunately, but we spent the entire afternoon with her. She, you know, she had chickens in the backyard, llamas in the backyard and it was the richest experience I had in a long time traveling. Tyler:              And the food there is excellent, right? It's quite safe. Infrastructure is surprisingly good given how remote it is and there's some magic to Chile, some kind of warmth but also efficiency where it just hits that sweet spot and it's both familiar and exotic at the same time. David:              Yeah. All right, back to India. So, now we'll get into India. So how have you been thinking about learning about India? I know at least in India is much, it's very different in terms of there's a lot of different languages, lots of different cultures. I think a lot of westerners don't realize that. Tyler:              I've been quite a few times to India. I've never gotten sick. I'm very fortunate. Some people do. I'm not sure how to weigh this risk, but I've done all kinds of things. Eating what I've wanted and just been fine every day. Maybe it's just because I travel a lot. Indian classical music I think is one of mankind's greatest creations ever. I would say going to the classical music festival in Chennai in December, I took my daughter to that. We both loved it. For food, India and China. Clearly the two best countries in the way better than any Michelin Guide and way cheaper. Everything is new and fresh and undiscovered and diverse. India's tough in a way that China isn't. So, China is poorer than what we're used to, but there's some grinding poverty in the countryside, but for the most part going around is not depressing. In India it can be. The air pollution can be worse than in China. The population density, the cities are out of control in a way you would not say about China. Chinese cities are way less dense than outsiders expect. Tyler:              Hong Kong is much denser than most parts of the typical Chinese city would be. So being in a Chinese city is a lot more pleasant than people expect, especially, uh, if it's not a major city, but India, my goodness, traffic, monsoon, disease. But there's something about the notion of ideas there. The religion, spirituality kind of syncretic something that is just magic and creative and nowhere else in the world do you get it and you're just bombarded with it the whole time. And people fall in love with India and they should. And you will. It's tough. I could, you know, you gotta be ready. David:              Talk more about the spirituality aspect because it's almost become trendy to talk about the eastern thought and, and, and whatnot. And I'm not discrediting it, but I think it's miss misinterpreted by many westerners. Tyler:              Keep in mind, I'm not myself a religious person. I wouldn't even say I'm spiritual. I don't really believe in anything in particular. So when I say it's rich in religion and spirituality, that for me actually has mixed sides and it may be partly a reason why India is not richer or has problems with public health, but the old saying when it comes to religion, every Indian is a millionaire, maybe is true, but don't think it's an entirely positive thing. But the ways in which religious ways of thinking suffuse the entire culture, uh, there are few other countries where that runs so deep and so thick and also in a diverse way. You have multiple religions including Christianity. And to learn those by going to India is one of the things you get there. It's one of the world's largest countries with Muslims, right? Maybe it's number three and I think. Indonesia number one, Pakistan, number two. Tyler:              I'm not sure if India is ahead of Bangladeshi behind it for Muslims, but obviously it's significant for Muslim culture. Janes, different kinds of Hindus, Sikhs and every city, every state is so different in a way people will engage with you is so fresh and this kind of deep burning curiosity to somehow incorporate what you know into what they think. Uh, to me there is very strong and I find very attractive. David:              This is going to be sort of part of a broader question. Are you reading books, blogs and we'll start there and then we'll get to the distinction between books and blogs and different forms of media. Tyler:              If it's India and China, uh, I take very different approaches. India, I find reading books much more useful than for China. Maybe it's because of the history intersects with European history more. But reading books on India, a lot more sticks with me than with China. Uh, I haven't found that many good blogs on India. It may just be my defect, but if you just read plenty of books on India and go and in terms of cinema and music and cuisine, try to actually learn things about those before you go. Fashion, design, textiles, studying history of Indian textiles is one of the best ways to learn Indian history and it can structure your tourism and where you go and maybe even what you buy. So there were more entry points for India. Whereas for Chinese music, I mean I've tried, I liked Chinese opera, but I don't find it that useful. A lot of it to me, I just don't enjoy Chinese popular music. I enjoy much less than Indian popular music. So for China it's much more important that I be there and talk to Chinese people, which you can do here as well of course. Tyler:              So I approached those two countries in a very different way. And India also I find I have a kind of stamina problem. I'm in very good health. I walk a lot, travel a lot, but it's hard for me day after day to be outdoors in Indian cities all day long. Just like pollution, noise, different indignities. I can't do it. Uh, with China, unless it's a very smoggy day I can. In India I paced myself much more. I spent a lot more time indoors. It's a little bit inefficient. David:              So let's get back to different forms of media. How do you think about books versus blogs? It's something that I debate a lot with my friends. Um, how do you think about it and what advice would you give to younger people as media begins to shift like it is. Tyler:              I mean mostly books are still better. There's way more knowledge in books than blogs and it's easier to find out how good a book is by reading reviews. Not that reviews are perfect, but you get a sense, you know, maybe blogging peaked about 10 years ago and I'm happy that I'm still blogging. Like our readership actually is not down at all. It's maybe up a little, but I don't think in general, blogs are a good way to learn about countries. They're very good for a particular food scenes. Like where should I eat in Mumbai? There'll be a food blog about Mumbai that will be way better than any book and then use the blog. But history of India, you know, just read some good books and they're there, read Indian fiction. Find these other entry points, like history of Indian textiles. David:              That's interesting that you talk about entry points. Is that something that you apply in other domains? Tyler's secret to learning: Don’t try to learn things head on. Look for entry points instead.

Ricki Mudd shares her story of meeting her birth parents and brother in China and Iris Leung introduces a volunteer service in China assisting parents looking for missing children. Ricki describes her amazing experiences in China and living with her birth family for six weeks, a story told in detail in the well-known documentary film Ricki's Promise. We discuss matters of cultural understanding and misunderstanding and the impact of the One Child Policy on her brother, and Ricki considers questions like who should make a decision to initiate a birth parent search, the adoptee or the adoptive parents, and when and how might that decision be made. Iris Leung introduces Baobeihuijia, a volunteer service in China assisting parents looking for missing children. She explains how an adoptee seeking birth parents might use the service and shares some examples of appeals from birth parents from the site: http://www.baobeihuijia.com  The missing children she mentions in this episode are 118795 (F) Luo Nan Nan, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, DOB: 02/03/97; 45675 (M) name unknown, Yuechi county, Sichuan Province, DOB: 08/03/11; and 197427 (F) Yin Yan, ShaoYang, Hunan Province, DOB: 12/13/01.

Welcome to the 24th installment of the Caixin-Sinica Business Brief, a weekly podcast that brings you the most important business stories of the week from China's top source for business and financial news. Produced by Kaiser Kuo of our Sinica Podcast, it features a business news roundup, plus conversations with Caixin reporters and editors. This week, we analyze S&P's decision to cut the long-term sovereign credit rating on China by one notch to A+ from AA-, the fifth-highest level, and change the outlook to stable from negative. We take a look at China's high-speed trains, which are getting faster and faster in the past few years. We study the news that Google will pay one billion dollars for assets related to its longtime collaboration with smartphone manufacturing partner HTC. We learn about a recent move by China's leading online travel agent Ctrip to open its first offshore call center in the U.K. We explore why a school authority in China's Hunan Province has reversed a decision to dock the pay of two teachers for refusing to take a quiz on their city's National Civilized City campaign. We also examine a point-based system launched by the local authorities in the Xiongan New Area economic zone to allocate affordable rental properties to migrants. In addition, we talk to Caixin senior editor Doug Young about an Alibaba-backed logistics company called BEST Inc., which raised $450 million in the largest IPO in the U.S. for a Chinese company this year, and South Korean retail giant Lotte Group's recent move to sell many of its stores in China. We also speak with Caixin reporter Raffaele Huang about the latest open water swimming craze in China. We'd love to hear your feedback on this product. Please send any comments and suggestions to sinica@supchina.com.  

This is Special English. I&`&m Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.More than 18 million children were born in Chinese hospitals last year, an increase of 11 percent from 2015. More than 45 percent of the newborns were not the first child of the family.Last year, China saw the largest number of newborns since 2000, following the abolition of the decades-long one-child policy.Moreover, the health authority reports that the maternal and infant mortality rates also dropped last year.China has pledged to improve maternal and child care services by increasing the number of obstetricians, midwives and hospital beds.This is Special English.China will host a United Nations meeting on fighting desertification in September.An estimated 1,400 delegates from around 200 parties to a United Nations special convention on desertification will participate in the event. They will gather in Ordos in north China&`&s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region for the meeting.The participants will discuss their national goals and action plans to achieve zero net land degradation by 2030. China&`&s desertified areas were greatly reduced in the period between 2009 and 2014.According to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, 12 million hectares of land are lost to desertification every year across the globe. And the figure could rise due to population growth, climatic reasons and unsustainable farming practices. You&`&re listening to Special English. I&`&m Mark Griffiths in Beijing.More than 100 golf courses have been banned in China, as part of its efforts to clamp down on illegal use of land and water resources.Of the total 680 golf courses across China, 110 have been closed since a national project was launched in 2011.Among their illicit behavior, these golf courses were found to have illegally used large amounts of arable land or nature reserve areas, or extracted groundwater in prohibited areas. Eighteen of the golf courses have been required to return their illegally occupied land, and another 47 have been ordered to stop business activities or construction. The central government has ordered the rectification of the remaining 500 golf courses, of which a dozen have closed voluntarily. China imposed a ban on the construction of new golf courses in 2004, when there were fewer than 200 in the country. However, the number continued to rise as the sport gained popularity, especially among business people and government officials. Golf courses are seen in all provincial-level regions except Tibet.This is Special English.Moving some colleges out of central Beijing, either to the suburbs or other cities, is necessary to ease overcrowding; but experts say any new locations will have to first meet the needs of the employees. Beijing&`&s rich education resources have long attracted large numbers of people from across China, leading to chronic congestion and putting a strain on public services. To alleviate the problem, the city government released a five-year plan last year for education development. The plan aims in part to keep higher-education institutes small in size. It also aims to remove some university facilities from central areas. Experts say it is imperative that some colleges and universities leave the city, but they expect it to be a long term process.You&`&re listening to Special English. I&`&m Mark Griffiths in Beijing.Seven hundred million Chinese people, or around half of the country&`&s total population, had used mobile phones to access the Internet as of the end of last year.The number of people who used their mobile phones to surf online continued to increase by an annual 10 percent during the past three years. Last year, almost 500 million people used mobile phones to make payments, an increase of 30 percent from a year earlier.China has more than 700 million internet users, accounting for 53 percent of the total population. The user number increase is now stable after almost 10 years of fast growth.Last year, the public used Internet-based government services more often than they used offline service centers and hotlines to access government information. Officials say this means that government information was disclosed to the public in an increasingly mobile, immediate and transparent manner.This is Special English.Surgeons in a central China hospital have succeeded in performing two complex pediatric heart surgery operations using 3D printing technology.One of the patients was a 13-year-old girl who suffered a condition which causes her heart muscle to grow abnormally thickly. The other patient was a 3-year-old boy with severe left ventricular outflow tract obstructions.Complexity was involved in both cases. Doctors at the hospital used a 3D printer to produce full-size replicas of the patients&`& hearts. The models allowed doctors to carefully study the condition and plan the operations.The surgery was successful and the patients are recovering.The event marked the first time that 3D printing technology was used in Hunan Province for pediatric cardiovascular surgery. This is Special English.Shanghai police have detained a gang of 83 people for faking auctions with illegal gains of 6 million yuan, roughly 870,000 U.S. dollars.The suspects charged antique owners high commission fees for fake auctions. They then told the clients that their auction items remained unsold.The suspects were also found to have issued fake authentication certificates and charged very high fees.Police started investigating the case in July last year when three fake auctions were discovered in the city.Around 100 people had been captured as of mid-December, with 83 of them facing criminal charges. You&`&re listening to Special English. I&`&m Mark Griffiths in Beijing. You can access the program by logging on to newsplusradio.cn. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know by e-mailing us at mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. That&`&s mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. Now the news continues.A teenage pop star from China, Wang Yuan, has addressed a United Nations youth forum at the UN headquarters in New York.Wang spoke at the United Nations youth forum on Jan. 31, calling for equal access to high quality education for young people worldwide.Wang is a member of the popular boys band TFboys. He told the crowd that China has 280 million young people, which is the second largest youth population in the world. He said he is fortunate to work with the United Nations to end poverty, promote gender equality and combat climate change.Wang said his dream for 2030 is that every young person will have access to good quality education; and girls have the same potential to achieve amazing things as boys.The United Nations youth forum is aimed at involving the efforts of youth to eradicate poverty and promote prosperity across the globe. This is Special English.Beijing has received more than 2 billion cubic meters of diverted water from the Yangtze River, benefiting 11 million local people.Since it began operation in December 2014, the south-to-north water diversion project has pumped over 2 billion cubic meters of water to Beijing, with 70 percent of the water from the Yangtze River.The water has been stored in reservoirs or is being used for groundwater, rivers and lakes.Officials say the project is running smoothly and safely. The water supply is stable and the water quality is up to standard.The project has greatly relieved the water shortage problems in the city. Previously, Beijing relied mainly on underground water with high calcium and magnesium salt levels.The middle route of the diversion project transmits water through canals and pipes from a reservoir in central China&`&s Hubei Province, bringing water to northern China. You&`&re listening to Special English. I&`&m Mark Griffiths in Beijing.Major parks in Beijing received a record high of 460,000 visitors in a single day on January 31, the fourth day of the Lunar New Year holiday.The visitor numbers in a dozen parks were up 14 percent year on year.Temple fairs, cultural exhibitions and other traditional events were held in the parks to celebrate the Spring Festival.Major parks in Beijing attracted some 1.4 million visitors during the week-long holiday.Beijing had blue skies for most of the holiday week, after the city had seen frequent smog earlier in the winter. This is Special English.The Chinese New Year was in the beginning of spotlight at a newly-founded cultural center in Athens, as Greeks celebrated the Year of the Rooster.On the weekend of the New Year, 40 children aged four to eight attended a craft workshop where they had the chance to make their own traditional Chinese paper kite. To many of the children, this was their first experience of Chinese culture.Excited about their new decorative toys, the children played in the vast indoor and outdoor spaces of the cultural center, flying kites.Adults were invited to make paper mache lanterns to take home with them, as a souvenir of their participation in the celebration. Afterwards, they decorated a wire dragon figure with paper strips and lighting, and attempted their first dragon dance. The auspicious dragon is a symbol of good luck, wisdom and power in Chinese culture.The workshops were followed by two Chinese film screenings, with one being the 2011 martial arts drama "Dragon", and the other, "The Grand master", a 2013 film based on the life of Chinese martial-arts grand master Ip Man.A statement from the center said that starting with the Chinese New Year celebration, its goal is to introduce a new events section to initiate visitors into foreign cultures.You&`&re listening to Special English. I&`&m Mark Griffiths in Beijing.A naval ship has been found in southern Sweden some 400 years after it went missing.The naval ship was the first to set sail from a naval base in southern Sweden in 1682 and is considered to have marked the launch of the famed shipbuilding history of the country.With its 70 canons and 450-strong crew, the ship was used in the bombing of Copenhagen and King Karl the Twelfth&`&s landing in Denmark in 1700. Later, the ship fell into oblivion.Last year, the area in southern Sweden where the ship was clearly marked out was located on old maps of the area.Diving expeditions were carried out and it was confirmed that an old shipwreck was indeed buried in thick layers of sediment at the bottom of the sea.Now, all evidence seem to point to it being a well-known warship and it seems it was deliberately sunk, with the intention of using it as a blockhouse.However, the ship will likely not be salvaged because marine biologists cannot tell how much of the ship remains. But there is a theory that at least one deck is intact.This is Special English.A collection of over 300 works of art from Russia&`&s State Historical Museum is on display at a museum in north China&`&s Shanxi Province.The items on display in the Shanxi Museum include oil paintings, sculptures, fashion and jewelry, as well as gold and silver ware from the 18th and 19th centuries.The collection displays the life of the Russian people in that period. The curator of the museum says the event has helped visitors to understand Russia, as well as its culture and history.Last November, as part of the cultural exchange program, a similar show from the province was held in Moscow.The exhibition is free of charge and will run until May before moving on to other parts of China.That is the end of this edition of Special English. To freshen up your memory, I&`&m going to read one of the news items again at normal speed. Please listen carefully.That is the end of today&`&s program. I&`&m Mark Griffiths in Beijing, and I hope you will join us every day, to learn English and learn about the world.

This is Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news. China is planning an overhaul of the Communist Youth League to reinforce youth belief in the Communist Party of China and pump vigor into the cause of national rejuvenation. The Party Central Committee has published a document outlining plans for the reform. The league committees will be downsized, with more staff assigned to the grassroots level to serve the youth, with bureaucratic procedures streamlined. Positions in the League should be filled by talented Party members and League workers who "understand and love young people". The document said League delegates should pay more attention to the opinions of Party members and ordinary young people. It should also take responsibility for serving and protecting teenagers' lawful rights. The League was founded in 1922, the following year after the founding of the Party. It was designed to be a bridge linking youth with the Party and a talent reserve for the Party. As of last year, the League had around 88 million members and almost 4 million organizations across the country. There have been worries that the league has lost its connection with young people and formed undesirable work styles, including formalism and a focus on entertainment. This is Special English. The journal Nature Biotechnology has said it will investigate criticisms of what was thought to be a breakthrough gene-editing technique developed by Chinese scientist Han Chunyu. The journal published Han's research findings online in May. But a scientist from Australia has said his lab was not able to replicate Han's results. Forty-two-year-old Han is a geneticist at Hebei University of Science and Technology. He rose to prominence with the publication of his cutting-edge gene editing technique known as NgAgo, and was perceived as a contender for a Nobel Prize. The journal said it had been contacted by several researchers who said they had not been able to reproduce Han's published results. The journal said it takes seriously any concerns raised about any paper, and considers them carefully, adding that it is now following an established process to investigate the issues. Han was quoted in a Beijing-based newspaper as saying that he will repeat the experiment and share his original data if the journal requests. Before NgAgo, efforts and investments were directed heavily towards the widely recognized genome-editing technique known as CRSPR. It allows researchers to clip a specific DNA sequence and replace it with a new one, offering the potential to cure diseases caused by faulty genes. The NgAgo technique for editing DNA was initially believed to surpass CRISPR in precision and efficiency. You are listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. A new guideline says China must shut down outmoded facilities, consolidate production and reduce pollution to increase the competitiveness of its petrochemical industry. According to the guideline issued by the State Council, China's cabinet, the development of the petrochemical industry is hindered by overcapacity along with security and environmental constraints. Foreign companies are to be allowed to participate in mergers and acquisitions in the sector. Seven planned coastal petrochemical production bases will be built to consolidate the sector. By 2020, energy consumption per 10,000 yuan of output, roughly 1,500 U.S. dollars, will be cut by 8 percent from the 2015 level, with cuts in carbon dioxide emissions and water consumption of 10 percent and 14 percent, respectively. This is Special English. A new judicial interpretation has been issued by the top court to regulate online judicial auctions. The Regulations on Online Auctions for Judicial Sales were mapped out by the Supreme People's Court, and will take effect on Jan 1 next year. A law enforcement official from the Supreme People's Court said online auctions will lower the cost of judicial sales and allow people from anywhere to take part. They are expected to help increase transparency of law enforcement and better protect creditors' interests. Each e-auction organized by a court requires a deposit, even in auctions for small items, which is different to the practice in auction houses. The regulations stipulate that the deposit should not exceed 20 percent of the starting bidding price and each online auction is required to last at least 24 hours to better enable all parties to take part. More than 1,400 courts have organized online auctions since 2010, when such practices were allowed for judicial sales. Deals worth more than 150 billion yuan, roughly 23 billion U.S. dollars, have been reached. You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. An 8-year-old boy from central China's Hunan Province has sued three hospitals, seeking compensation after being infected with AIDS. The boy was confirmed HIV positive in July last year. He received treatment in the hospitals for serious traffic accident injuries obtained in 2014. His HIV screening tests were negative before the initial treatment which included a blood transfusion. The local health authority says it is difficult to determine the exact source of the infection. During a period of 18 months following the traffic accident, the child was hospitalized eight times in three different hospitals in the local area, the provincial capital Changsha and Shanghai. He also spent considerable time outside the hospitals, which makes ascertaining the precise source of the infection difficult. In addition to the three hospitals, the co-defendants also include a blood supplier organization and a biological produt company. This is Special English. Chinese experts are expected to arrive in Abidjan, the capital of Cote d'Ivoire to reinforce agricultural cooperation between the two countries, and help modernize the agricultural sector of the African country. In September, China will send 30 agricultural experts with different expertise to evaluate national needs in domains including cocoa, cashew nuts, rice, pineapples and mangoes. Cote d'Ivoire's agricultural ministry said in a statement that five Cote d'Ivoire villages will benefit from the program dubbed "one village, one company". It was initiated by China to increase incomes for farmers. The project will be carried out in 100 African villages. China currently provides support for Cote d'Ivoire's agricultural sector through a hydro-agricultural project, 180 km south of Abidjan. The project is for rice farming. You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. You can access the program by logging on to newsplusradio.cn. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know by e-mailing us at mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. That's mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. Now the news continues. When China opened its arms to international universities, foreign educators saw the jointly founded institutions as transforming Chinese higher education. Denis Simon is an executive vice-chancellor of Duke University's campus in Kunshan in eastern China. Simon says the idea of allowing seven foreign universities to have campuses in China is something people wouldn't have thought would happen 20 years ago. He says the number will soon grow to nine. Simon told China Daily that he sees it as a watershed moment in Chinese higher education. Located in Kunshan in Jiangsu province, Duke Kunshan University was jointly founded in 2013 by two prestigious universities, Duke University in the United States and China's Wuhan University. It was designed as a new model to advance China's higher learning system. Simon said Duke came specifically to deliver a liberal arts education to China, and to provide an innovative educational platform. Since 2004, the Chinese government has approved the establishment of independent Sino-foreign universities across the country in the hope that these joint-ventures will help to facilitate the transfer of international educational experiences and import advanced management, teaching methods as well as curriculum systems. Duke Kunshan received its first class in 2014 and currently offers four master's programs, namely global health, environmental policy, medical physics and management studies. In addition, there's an undergraduate program called the Global Learning Semester. The campus has seen its first graduates in global health and medical physics. Its management program has already had graduates for two years. This is Special English. After its successful Shanghai debut, the stage drama, "Three Body Problem", has begun its performance in Beijing. The drama is based on Chinese author Liu Cixin's first book of a trilogy entitled "Remembrance of Earth's Past", also known as the "Three Body Problem". The story features human's first but frustrating contact with an alien civilization. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novel last year. Along with the storyline of ups and downs, the drama invites multimedia technology to showcase magnificent 3D scenes, bringing audience a visual feast. The scene of "three suns" particularly impressed many viewers. Audience members saw flaring suns being swept from the stage into the auditorium. In fact, the "suns" were controlled by several unmanned aerial vehicles, with motion trails calculated accurately. The lighting is another highlight. Hundreds of beams went around back and forth or were projected on semitransparent curtains, creating a vivid 3D world. The director of the show Liu Fangqi says this is a new form of drama combined with stage art and special-effects in a theater with great surround sound. It might be the best way for science fiction novels to be showcased on stage. You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Fifteen people from seven countries in the European Union have finally wrapped up their tour of China. Members of the group were winners of an EU-wide contest where they had to submit articles, pictures, videos and paintings on the theme of China-EU friendship. The event was jointly sponsored by the Confucius Institute and the Mission of China to the EU. The winners include a former ambassador to China and a corporate consultant, as well as an artist and a college student. They visited museums and traveled to communities and villages in Beijing and northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. During their trip, they learned about China's economic and social development. They also witnessed local governments' poverty relief efforts. This is Special English. The number of tourists from the Chinese mainland visiting Taiwan decreased by 12 percent in May and June, compared with the same period last year. Nevertheless, the mainland has remained the largest source of visitors in Taiwan so far this year. More than 2 million visitors from the Chinese mainland visited the island in the first half of the year, accounting for almost 40 percent of all visitors to Taiwan. Despite the marked drop in May and June, visitor numbers still grew by 3 percent in the first six month. However, tourism experts in Taiwan worried that the number of mainland tourists will continue to drop in the months to come. Taiwan-based Ezfly International Travel says people in the tourism industry want a change. Around 90 percent of the company's clients are from the mainland. The company says the number of mainland tourists began to decline sharply after Taiwan's new leader took office in May. This is Special English. A new song has become popular among Internet users in China, who feel it is a vivid description of their lives as workaholics who always work overtime. The song is entitled My Body is Hollowed Out. （全文见周六微信。）

This is Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news. China has launched a campaign to tackle school bullying. The State Council, the country's Cabinet, has sent a notice to local education bureaus. The campaign aims to curb bullying in primary and middle schools, including physical and verbal. Cyberspace bullying will also be targeted. The campaign targets all primary and middle schools across the country, including middle vocational schools. Campus bullying is a serious issue in China. Last year, a student was stabbed to death by three of his classmates in Guangdong Province. In another incident last year, a video clip showing schoolgirls slapping and kicking another girl in Jiangxi Province went viral online. The event triggered a widespread discussion of campus bullying. According to the notice, the inspector will be responsible for monitoring all schools in his or her school district. The inspector is required to report any bullying to the school and to the local education inspection department. Schools are required to invite public security and justice departments to provide anti-bullying education. The notice is urging schools to create procedures to prevent and handle campus bullying as well as to clarify responsibilities of school staff members regarding the issue. This is Special English. Aiming to improve students' overall fitness, the education authority is calling for greater emphasis on physical education in school admissions and assessment of officials. To encourage students to exercise more, the Ministry of Education is urging high schools and colleges to give more consideration in admissions to students' PE class attendance, fitness level and on-campus athletic performance. It also asks that the work evaluation of local education and school officials be partially based on students' results. The call is in response to a regulation issued recently by the State Council, the country's Cabinet, aimed at highlighting physical education's role in China's education system. Under the ministry's monitoring, if students' overall fitness is found to have declined for three consecutive years, the school leaders and local officials in charge will be punished, and will not be eligible for promotion. PE tests are currently included in China's high school entrance exams. However, students' PE performance is not part of the scoring system of the national higher learning entrance exam, or gaokao. That has led students in senior grades to focus more on academics than sports, and schools to replace PE classes with extra tutoring. A lack of physical exercise was partially blamed for students' fitness decline in the National Fitness Survey released last year. You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. The support ship of a new deep-sea submarine has been delivered to its owner, the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. The 94-meter-long vessel has a full-load displacement of almost 6,300 tonnes, with a range of 10,000 nautical miles. It is equipped with 10 permanent research labs and two removable labs. The ship will serve as the support ship for a new submarine currently under development and for future expeditions of sea floor trenches. The vessel is scheduled to sail from Guangzhou to a port in Hainan Province for off-shore tests. If all goes well, the ship will sail to the Mariana Trench for a research mission in the near future. The new manned submarine can reach a depth of 4,500 meters under water and is likely to go through off-shore testing in the first half of next year. China's current manned submarine, the "Jiaolong", reached a depth of 7,000 meters in the Mariana Trench in June 2012. This is Special English. A robot has been developed aiming to get enrolled in first-class Chinese universities next year. The robot will then try to get into prestigious and comparatively more difficult Peking University or Tsinghua in 2020, after beating 12th graders. The robot will sit three exams, namely math, the Chinese language, and a comprehensive test of liberal arts including history and geography. A company in Chengdu in southwest China won the bid for the artificial intelligence program on the robot's math test held by the Ministry of Science and Technology last year. Like the other examinees, the robot will have to finish the tests in designated time. It will take its exams in a closed room without anyone else present, except for proctors and a notary. The robot will be linked to a printer before each exam, and the electronic examination paper will be fed into the robot's program at the start of the examination. The robot will be totally disconnected from the internet and will solve the problems with its artificial intelligence program. Finally the answers will be outputted through the printer. Experts say the robot is just one example of the boom in artificial intelligence after Google's AlphaGo beat a world-class player in the ancient board game Go in March. You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. British scientists have discovered three earth-sized planets orbiting a dim and cool star 40 light years from Earth. The discovery was made by the University of Cambridge. It is believed to be the best place to start searching for extra-terrestrial life. Didier Queloz is a professor from the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory. He says the discovery of a planetary system around such a small star opens up a brand new avenue for research. Scientists used a telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile, to view the star. Known as TRAPPIST-1, it is in the Aquarius constellation. The scientists found that the dim and cool star faded slightly at regular intervals, indicating that several objects were transiting, or passing between the star and the Earth. Detailed analysis showed that there were three planets of a similar size to the Earth. TRAPPIST-1 is an ultra-cool dwarf star, and as such is much cooler and redder than the Sun and is barely larger than Jupiter. Such stars are very common in the Milky Way and very long-lived, but this is the first time that planets have been found around one of them. This is Special English. British researchers have developed the world's tiniest engine, just a few billionths of a meter in size. The engine uses light to power itself. The researchers say the nanoscale engine can form the basis of future nano-machines that can navigate in water, sense the environment around them, and even enter living cells to fight disease. The researchers at the University of Cambridge published their study results in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The prototype device is made of tiny charged particles of gold, bound together with temperature-responsive polymers in the form of a gel. When the nano-engine is heated to a certain temperature with a laser, it stores large amounts of elastic energy in a fraction of a second. As the polymer coatings expel all the water from the gel and collapse, it forces the gold nanoparticles to bind together into tight clusters. But when the device is cooled down, the polymers take on water and expand again, and the gold nanoparticles are strongly and quickly pushed apart, like a spring. The research suggests how to turn Van de Waals energy into elastic energy of polymers and release it very quickly. Van de Waals energy refers to the attraction between atoms and molecules. You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. You can access the program by logging on to newsplusradio.cn. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know by e-mailing us at mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. That's mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. Now the news continues. China's TV singing contest "Super Girls" will return to screens after a ten-year break. The show is to be re-launched by Hunan Satellite TV, in Changsha, the capital of central China's Hunan Province. "Super Girls" is similar to "American Idol", offering ordinary people a chance at stardom. Around 610,000 people have registered to enter the contest. Women above the age of 18 can apply to be a contestants. They will be scored by the judging panel and public votes. Twenty finalists will be announced in June. "Super Girls" was first produced in 2004, and at its height, 200 million people tuned in to watch the live, three-hour finale of "Super Girls 2005" show. Now a celebrity, Li Yuchun was then a student with Sichuan Conservatory of Music. She won the contest in 2005. Li later appeared on the cover of Time Asia Magazine as one of the 25 Asian Heroes of the year. A set of stamps were issued featuring the singer. Since the run-away success of the format, Chinese TV producers have competed to make similar shows, including the popular "Voice of China" series. However, there are concerns that the new "Super Girls" show may not be able to achieve its past glory. This is Special English. （全文见周六微信。）

This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing. Here is the news. President Xi Jinping has underscored the importance of combat effectiveness in the military academy. Xi made the remarks during an inspection tour of the top military academy, the National Defense University of the People's Liberation Army. Xi applauded the university's accomplishments. He encouraged the university to continue to improve its educational theories and training models, as this would boost the competence and professionalism of its faculty. The president said to build a world-class army, military-affiliated colleges must be elite academies, adding that reform and innovation would support this goal. The president urged all military academies to advance warfare strategies to create a military theory that is up-to-date, pioneering and unique. They were encouraged to closely follow global military developments, research the role of IT in military operations and address the problems in the country's combat readiness. Xi is also chairman of the Central Military Commission. He urged servicemen and women to adhere to the correct political direction. He also underscored the importance of military innovation, calling for more efforts to nurture, gather and retain talented servicemen and women. This is NEWS Plus Special English. No more side effects have been detected among the people vaccinated with suspected illegal vaccines. The National Health and Family Planning Commission says the observation was based on the analyses made by medical experts with a state-level database on vaccines. The commission has been working with local health departments to crack down on illegal vaccines, calling for local departments to report more information on the whereabouts of the illegal products. It was revealed recently that vaccines improperly stored and expired have been sold in 20 provincial-level regions since 2011. In a related development, the World Health Organization has released a notice, saying improperly stored and expired vaccines pose a very small risk of causing a toxic reaction. The notice says vaccines need to be stored and managed properly or they can lose potency and become less effective. It says however, improperly stored or expired vaccines seldom cause a toxic reaction, adding that there was likely minimal safety risk in this particular incident. You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing. Xinhua News Agency President Cai Mingzhao has pledged continuous support to the United Nations Environment Program on environment protection and sustainable development, and particularly to UNEP's efforts to stop illegal trade in wildlife. During his visit to the UNEP headquarters in Nairobi in Kenya, Cai said Xinhua will constantly explore new cooperation models with the U.N. agency with a view to make greater contribution to human development. Cai says Xinhua, China's state news agency, is willing to support UNEP's environmental campaigns including wildlife protection, through enhanced news coverage and interactions on official websites and social media platforms, as well as by jointly holding public service activities. Both organizations have agreed to combine resources to bring greater attention to the illegal trade in wildlife so that consumers understand the damage caused by their purchases, in an effort to reduce demand. UNEP deputy executive director Ibrahim Thiaw said Cai's visit has come at a critical moment, as UNEP is leading the United Nations campaign to combat the illegal trade in wildlife. He said the UNEP welcomes Xinhua's participation in its other major campaigns this year, including Marine Litter, Sustainable Tourism, and Air Pollution. This is NEWS Plus Special English. A new report says as of the end of last year, 4 million Chinese students had studied or were studying overseas since 1978 when China opened to the world. The report, by the Ministry of Educaton, features employment of students who have returned to China. It found that a total of 2.2 million students had returned. Last year, over 520,000 Chinese students went abroad for study, and 410,000 returned. Most of the returnees, around 75 percent of interviewees, were willing to work in eastern coastal cities. Almost half of the respondents said they were willing to stay in China's biggest cities including Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen. More than 3 percent of interviewees hope to start their own business; and career development space is the most important factor for them in choosing jobs, followed by location and salary. Students majoring in management, science and economics are in greatest demand after they go back to China, followed by those who majored in engineering, arts and law. An official from the ministry says almost all of the students were studying abroad at their own expenses. The report is aimed at helping students and their parents to make better plans for their future studies. You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing. The death of a 4-year-old girl, who was beheaded in a knife attack in Taiwan, has sparked widespread public anger on the island and criticism of calls to abolish the death penalty. The attack took place as the child was cycling towards a metro station with her mother in Taipei. The 33-year-old suspect attacked and decapitated the girl with a cleaver in full view of her mother. Bystanders heard the mother's screams and rushed to restrain the attacker until police arrived. The suspect, Wang Ching-yu had been arrested in the past for drug-related crimes and had twice sought medical treatment for mental conditions after physical altercations with his family. Television footage showed angry people gathered outside a police station in Taipei where the suspect was being held. Some attacked the suspect as he was being transferred to the prosecutor's office for questioning. Many went to lay flowers and toys at the spot where the girl was killed. Taiwan resumed capital punishment in 2010 after a five-year hiatus. Executions are reserved for serious crimes, including aggravated murder and kidnapping, but politicians are divided over whether or not to retain it. This is the second child-killing case in Taiwan in a year. This is NEWS Plus Special English. China's tuberculosis infection rate has been decreasing steadily over the past five years. According to the National Health and Family Planning Commission, the morbidity rate from TB has reduced from 71 in every 100,000 people in 2011 to 63 last year. The death rate caused by TB has also been following a downward trend, dropping from 3 in 100,000 people in 2011 to 2 in 2014, well below the international average of 15 in 100,000 people. The commission says a TB prevention and treatment system is gradually taking shape, which places a particular focus on groups including students and migrant workers. Last year there were 34,000 students reported to have contracted TB in China, down 29 percent compared with 2011. China has invested more than 7 billion yuan, roughly 1 billion U.S. dollars, on the prevention and treatment of TB during the past five years, and will continue to enhance the work. You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing. You can access the program by logging onto NEWSPlusRadio.cn. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know by e-mailing us at mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. That's mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. Now the news continues. Doctors from south China's Hunan Province performed a successful spinal surgery recently, using 3D printing technology on a man suffering from a spinal deformity. The surgery was conducted by a team from the Third Xiangya Hospital of Central South University. It used a 3D-printed device to help the doctors determine the angle and depth of the incisions to ensure the accuracy of the operation. The patient had long suffered from spinal arthritis, leading to a severe humpback. His height decreased from 1.7 meters to 1.3 meters due to the deformity, and doctors cut parts of his spine to restore him to an upright posture. Due to the densely distributed nerves on the spine, the surgery required very high precision, and any mistake could result in paralysis of the patient. The 3D-printed nylon part is a precise model of the patient's spine, on which the position and depth of the incision are marked. Fastened to the spine, it made the surgery much easier for the doctors, cutting the surgery time by half, to five hours. The patient is expected to be able to walk in a week. You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing. Enthusiastic visitors have snapped up the first batch of tickets in just five minutes for the opening day of the Shanghai Disneyland Park on June 16, temporarily crashing the official website. A statement issued by the Shanghai Disney Resort says it had received warm feedback since it started selling tickets online at noon on Monday. Within half an hour, clicks on the website shanghaidisneyresort.com reached more than 5 million. The massive volume resulted in the company's ticketing system malfunctioning temporarily. The statement says all official website ticketing systems and authorized partners' distribution channels functioned well later. But it did not say how many tickets were sold. Disney Resort's flagship store on Alitrip, one of its authorized ticket-selling websites, also sold out standard admission tickets and two-day tickets that include the opening day. According to Alitrip, more than 20,000 tickets were sold in 30 minutes. By 4 pm, the Alitrip store had seen 35,000 transactions of one-day tickets and 12,000 two-day tickets sold. Meanwhile, hotels at the resort are also open to bookings, with rooms at the Shanghai Disneyland Hotel starting from 1,650 yuan, roughly 254 U.S. dollars, and those at the Toy Story Hotel priced at 850 yuan. This is NEWS Plus Special English. （全文见周日微信。）

This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news. A Chinese rocket scientist has said that 110 China-made Long March rockets will take to the skies over the next five years, as more models are developed. The former head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology Liang Xiaohong says the past decade witnessed a rapid increase in the number of Long March rockets launched. From 2011 to 2015, 86 Long March rockets were launched, and from 2006 to 2010 the number was 48. The scientist says the increasing number of launches within the five-year time frame shows that China's capacity in rocket design, production and management have been improved significantly. In addition, the next-generation Long March 5 heavy lift rocket and medium Long March 7 will debut this year, and the heavy carrier rocket system is in development. The new-generation rockets will use environmentally friendly propellant and will feature first-class space technology. The heavy carrier rocket, which is comparable to the U.S. Saturn V, is expected to be launched in 15 years, the thrust of which will be five times the current force. Moreover, it is expected that by 2020, China's Mars program will have begun, thanks to the Long March 5 rockets. Advanced stages including Expedition 2 will have been developed. This is NEWS Plus Special English. China will tighten quarantine measures against the Zika virus. Public health authorities say those from the affected regions should declare themselves to the quarantine staff when entering China, if they have suspicious symptoms, including fever, joint pain, rash, headaches and muscle pain. The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said entry and exit quarantine areas should be equipped with test kits for Zika. It said effective measures should be made to eliminate mosquitoes in vehicles and containers from the affected areas. Guangdong Province reported China's 10th confirmed Zika case recently. A 40-year-old man returned from Venezuela with his family on Feb. 25. His two children tested positive for the virus on Feb. 27. The World Health Organization declared a global emergency in early February amid a Zika outbreak in Central and South America. China has also been on alert as experts warn the warming weather may facilitate the spread of the mosquito-borne virus. You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Almost 40,500 disabled people in China have been admitted to universities over the past five years, thanks to government subsidies. Following the release of a series of plans on special education in 2014, more than 100,000 disabled students received aid to continue their studies, while over 4,500 teachers received specialist training. At the elementary level, 71 percent of disabled children were accepted to nine-year compulsory education during 2011 and 2015. Disabled people in China have also enjoyed better social security services during the 12th Five-Year Plan period, as a basic living allowance was made available to more than 11 million disabled people nationwide. Moreover, 70 percent of China's disabled are now covered by a pension insurance program, with almost 6,000 nursing agencies providing services. In terms of employment, more than 21 million disabled people in China have a job, which lifted 5 million people out of poverty during the five years. There were 30 million disabled people across China registered in a state-level database for the disabled as of the end of 2014. This is NEWS Plus Special English. A joint research team of Chinese and European scientists has discovered some certain plants on the Tibetan Plateau can predict the occurrence of an Indian monsoon. Researchers found that dominant grass species, including bog sedge on the high mountains of Tibet, can predict when an Indian monsoon is coming by unfolding their leaves before it hits. The researchers recently published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports. It is the first time scientists have found some plants which possess sophisticated weather-forecasting abilities, and they think these plants are more adaptable to climate change. The researchers made the discovery as they investigated whether a sudden jump in temperature would interfere with a plant's biological clock, which might indicate climate change's negative impact on an ecosystem. Many plants fold their leaves during cold and dry winter months to protect themselves. Some fear that plants may unfold their leaves early in the event of an exceptionally warm winter. They analyzed observational records from five scientific stations on the plateau over the last two decades, and conducted experiments for seven years on a remote mountain slope in Tibet to test and prove their theories. This is NEWS Plus Special English. Australian animals that look "ugly" attract little or no research funding, leading to poor conservational outcomes. A study has found that Australian animals that scientists deemed "ugly" received minimal scientific attention in comparison to their more aesthetically-pleasing counterparts. Researchers from Western Australia reviewed scientific literature on 331 species of Australian mammals, and grouped each animal's appearance under one of three banners, "good", "bad" or "ugly". The "good" group included some of Australia's most recognizable native fauna, including kangaroos, echidnas and koalas; while the "bad" featured introduced, invasive species including rabbits, cane toads, cats and foxes. Some of the animals dubbed "ugly" were sub-species of bats and rodents, and according to researchers, that group makes up almost half of Australia's total fauna. Two types of bats, known for their peculiar looks, were the orange leaf-nosed bat and several species of ghost bats or false vampire bats. Associate Professor Trish Fleming from Murdoch University has been working on the study. He explained that scientists were not rejecting the ugly animals on purpose. He says these animals mostly come out at night and are small so they are not as obvious; they are also not considered to drive ecosystems but they are important organisms. You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. You can access the program by logging onto NEWSPlusRadio.cn. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know by e-mailing us at mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. That's mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. Now the news continues. A 3,000-year-old wheel, the oldest ever complete wheel to be found in Britain, has been unearthed during excavation work at the site of a Bronze Age settlement in England. Experts from Cambridge Archaeological Unit are carrying out the dig at a site in Cambridge shire known as "Britain's Pompeii". The experts say the wheel is the largest and earliest of its kind ever found in Britain. Archaeologists have already discovered the remains of what are Britain's best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings in a river channel near the city of Peterborough. The meter wide wheel was discovered sitting in sediments close to the remains of a dwelling house. It is still fixed to its hub. The experts say it raises a whole host of questions, mainly why is there a wheel in the remains of a river channel. Even more intriguing is that it is close to the remains of a horse discovered earlier. Archaeologists say the wheel may have belonged to a horse-drawn cart; but it is too early to know at the moment how the wheel was used. In such a marshy area, boats were thought to have been the most common method of transport, confirmed by the discovery of eight dug-out canoes of various sizes found nearby. This is NEWS Plus Special English. One of the most iconic structures in Britain, Blackpool Tower, has won a heritage award. Visible on a clear day from Wales and the English Lake District, the 158 meter high tower opened in 1894, inspired by the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Although it is the highest, the accolade, Grade One Listing from Historic England, is the first official recognition for its importance as a work of engineering. In its citation for the newly introduced heritage awards, the Institution of Civil Engineers said Blackpool Tower was "possibly the most instantly recognizable work of civil engineering in Britain". Darrell Matthews, director of ICE in Britain's North West region described the tower's nomination as really interesting because civil engineering is usually associated with more practical structures such as railways and bridges. But the tower, on the northern English coast of the Irish Sea, was "all about having fun". Matthews said there is no doubting the engineering skill that went into designing and building it, so it's a very worthy winner. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people ascend to the top of the tower in lifts, many daring to walk on a glass skywalk, staring down onto the ground below. The glass, 5 centimeters thick, can withstand the weight of two elephants. You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Sixteen captive Pere David's deer have been released to join their peers around central China's Dongting Lake. The deer, 11 female and 5 male, escaped captivity in the 1990s and were raised in a reserve in east China's Jiangsu Province. They were fitted with GPS devices before being reintroduced to the wild. Almost driven to extinction, around 100 deer were counted in the most recent census of the species around the Dongting Lake area in Hunan Province. It is hoped that the new additions will enrich the gene pool and boost the population. During a catastrophic flood in 1998, a handful of deer escaped from a nature reserve in neighboring Hubei Province, crossing the Yangtze River to settle in the reed beds and marshlands by the Dongting Lake. Pere David's Deer are believed to be endemic to China's subtropical areas. Chinese people call them "sibuxiang", meaning "it looks like none of the four". The name refers to the fact that the animal has a neck resembling that of a camel, a tail of a donkey, with cow-like hooves and deer-like antlers. Pere David's Deer was named after Armand "Pere" David, a Basque missionary and the first Westerner to introduce the animal to Europe in the late 19th century. The species became extinct in China by 1900 due to natural disasters and overhunting. In 1985, 22 specimens were brought to China from the world's only herd in Bedfordshire, Great Britain. This is NEWS Plus Special English. Life expectancy in Beijing rose slightly from 2014 to reach almost 82 years last year. An annual report by the Beijing Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning found that the life expectancy rose by 0.1 year from the figure in 2014. The infant mortality rate was 0.2 percent. The top three fatal diseases were cancer, heart disease and cerebral vascular diseases. It also pointed to increased medical expenses. Per capita medical expenses for outpatients at public hospitals stood at 440 yuan, roughly 67 U.S. dollars, up 4 percent from the previous year, adjusted for inflation. Per capita residential treatment fees were 20,000 yuan, a year-on-year growth of 5 percent. Beijing medical institutions registered 240 million patient visits, up 50 percent from five years ago. This is NEWS Plus Special English. （全文见周六微信。）

This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing. Here is the news. China has begun a national key research and development plan to streamline numerous state-funded scientific and technological programs. The plan focuses on research in fields vital to the country's development and people's well-being. The research fields cover agriculture, energy, the environment and health, as well as strategic fields key to industrial competitiveness, innovation and national security. The plan now covers 59 specific projects. It merges several prominent state sci-tech programs focused on key fields including biotechnology, space, information and energy. Breakthroughs of the programs included supercomputer Tianhe-1, manned deep-sea research submarine Jiaolong, and super hybrid rice. The plan aims to address low efficiency resulting from redundant programs. More than 100 projects will be merged into five plans, namely, natural science, major sci-tech, key research and development plan, technical innovation and the sci-tech human resources. The national key research and development plan is the first to be started. This is NEWS Plus Special English. Chinese scientists have developed a system to measure the leak rate for a vacuum environment which will be used in the country's third step moon exploration program. The measurement system will help scientists work out a better way to preserve samples from the moon, which are stored in a vacuum capsule, increasing the accuracy of research. The third step of the lunar exploration project involves taking samples from the surface of the moon and bringing them back to earth. The samples will be packed in a vacuum environment. The accuracy of measuring the finest leak in a vacuum capsule will have direct impact on the research result of the samples. The system will ensure a similar vacuum environment as found on the moon. It will also make sure that the two kilograms of samples remain uncontaminated on their way back to earth, preventing them from being affected by any kinds of environment changes, including extremely high or low temperatures. China has a three-step moon exploration project, namely, orbiting, landing and returning from the moon. Chang'e-5 lunar probe is expected to be launched around 2017 to finish the last chapter of the project. You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing. Chinese researchers have successfully created autistic monkeys by implanting autism-related genes into monkey embryos. The monkeys are the world's first nonhuman primates to show the effects of autism. The study will play an important role in studying the pathology of the condition and exploring effective intervention and treatment. The research has demonstrated the feasibility of studying brain disorders with genetically engineered primates. That's according to neuroscientist Muming Poo, a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States. Poo says for quite a long time, there has been little good drug innovation in autism due to the lack of suitable animal models. This work will allow researchers to conduct deeper studies into autism and the brain's working mechanism. Autism spectrum disorder is one of a range of neurodevelopment problems. People with the condition usually exhibit defects in social interaction, stereotyped repetitive behaviors, anxiety and emotional difficulties. In recent years, the incidence of autism has continued to rise globally, and there is no effective treatment. Around four in every 1,000 Chinese children between ages 6 and 12 have the condition. This is NEWS Plus Special English. Southwest China's Guizhou Province is expected to evacuate more than 9,000 people for the protection of the world's largest ever radio telescope before its completion in September. The evacuation is facilitated by a proposal delivered last year by members of the Guizhou Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the top advisory body. The proposal asks the provincial government to remove local homes less than 5 kilometers away from the Aperture Spherical Telescope, to create a sound electromagnetic wave environment. Guizhou is expected to resettle people from two counties in four settlements by the end of September. Each of the involved residents will get 12,000 yuan, roughly 1,800 U.S. dollars subsidy for the resettlement; and each ethnic minority household with housing difficulties will get 10,000 yuan subsidy. Construction of the telescope began in March 2011 with an investment of 1.2 billion yuan. Upon completion, the telescope, which is 500 meters in diameter, will become the world's largest of its kind. It will overtake the one in Puerto Rico, which is 300 meters in diameter. You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing. Central China's Hunan Province is offering a reward to anyone who can decode the inscription on the back of six ancient gold coins. The Cultural Relics Bureau of Jinshi City has offered 10,000 yuan, roughly 1,500 U.S. dollars, to anyone who can explain the mystery of the coins, housed in the city's museum. A small white glazed pot containing six foreign gold coins was discovered at a farm in the 1960s and was sent to the museum in the 1980s. They are classified as top-level national cultural relics. These coins were manufactured using ancient Greek coinage method at least 650 years ago. The inscription on the front, in a rare type of Arabic, is the name of a King, but the information on the back remains unexplained. Cultural relics officials have consulted Chinese and foreign experts, but to no avail. This is NEWS Plus Special English. Online retailer Amazon China has unveiled its annual list of most romantic cities, with Zhengzhou in Henan Province declared the most romantic Chinese city of 2015. Zhengzhou led the country in the proportion of books sold last year on the topics of romance, relationship and marriage. Cities of Erdos and Baotou, both in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, ranked second and third. Among the top ten, northern Chinese cities outnumbered the southern for the first time. According to Amazon, the result does not necessarily mean that people in northern China are more romantic than their southern counterparts; and the ranking reveals many factors, not just the cultural environment of a city. China's four first-tier cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, did not feature in the top 40. Amazon says it appears that residents in smaller cities are under less pressure and have more leisure time to enjoy romantic literature. You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing. You can access the program by logging onto NEWSPlusRadio.cn. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know by e-mailing us at mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. That's mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. Now the news continues. Fewer fireworks were used across China in the Lunar New Year, as it was banned in many places over air pollution concerns. Two thirds of people polled in 35 major Chinese cities last year were in favor of fireworks bans at Spring Festival. The research was done by the center for public opinion research at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Public concerns over air quality means people routinely check air quality and wear masks, and many own air purifiers at home. Data from the Ministry of Environmental Protection suggests that air quality only improved marginally last year in the area around Beijing. In Shanghai, fireworks are banned completely downtown, and firework purchases require real name registration to track violators. A total of 140 cities in China have banned fireworks, while another 540 cities have restrictions in place. Fewer fireworks have made sanitation workers' life easier. They cleaned up 80 percent less firework waste in Shanghai this year. In nearby Hangzhou, the host city of this year's G20 summit, fireworks have been banned for the whole year, and police have offered rewards for reporting any sales, storage, transportation or setting off of fireworks. But some people are concerned that the ban kills off a tradition, calling fireworks makers to develop more environmentally friendly alternatives. You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing. Giant panda researchers in southwest China's Sichuan Province have named a pair of panda cubs, after receiving more than 3,000 responses. The winning names are "Olympia" and "Fuwa", and were posted by the president of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach. Both names came out on top after five pairs of names were put up for a final vote. "Fuwa" is the name of the mascots for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. After the twins were born in June, the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Center launched the project to solicit names for the cubs between July and September. More than 3,000 responses, including 900 from outside the Chinese mainland, were submitted through Sina Weibo microblog, messaging app WeChat and e-mail. The twin sisters have attracted great attention worldwide because of their famous family. Their mother "Kelin" is well known for a photo showing her watching a "panda porn" video. The photo was chosen by the United States' Time Magazine as one of the "Most Surprising Photos of 2013". The twins' grandfather "Cobi" was named by former president of the International Olympic Committee Juan Antonio Samaranch in 1992. This is NEWS Plus Special English. China's box office totaled 3 billion yuan, roughly 460 million U.S. dollars, during the Spring Festival holiday week, the highest compared with previous holidays. The film authority says the box office from Feb. 8 to 13 increased by 67 percent over the same period of last year. Three Chinese movies contributed to almost 94 percent of the box office in this period. Among them, "Mermaid", directed by Hong Kong comedian and director Stephen Chow, led the box office by making 1.5 billion yuan. "From Vegas to Macau III", starring Hong Kong actors Chow Yun-fat and Andy Lau, scored 680 million yuan, while "The Monkey King 2" took the third place with 650 million yuan. "Kung Fu Panda 3" was also a success, profiting 812 million yuan, since its screening on Jan. 29. China's box office earnings reached 44 billion yuan last year, up almost 50 percent over that of 2014. The number of audience totaled 1.3 billion, a year-on-year increase of 51 percent. China has been one of the most fast-growing film markets across the world. As more cinemas open in smaller cities and towns, going to watch movies becomes a lifestyle in those places. Experts say China may overtake the United States to be the world's largest film market in the next two to three years. This is NEWS Plus Special English. （全文见周日微信。）

This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing. Here is the news. The People's Liberation Army of China has made a historic reshuffle of its branches, as military reforms ordered by President Xi Jinping gradually unfold. During a ceremony held in Beijing, Xi announced the establishment of the PLA Army Headquarters, the PLA Rocket Force and the PLA Strategic Support Force. Xi is also chairman of the Central Military Commission. The president says the moves are a key milestone in the modernization efforts of the Chinese military. Previously, the PLA's ground force did not have a headquarters, as its units were under the direct control of the Central Military Commission. The seven regional military commands were in charge of the detailed operations of ground units stationed within their jurisdictions. The Rocket Force's predecessor, the PLA Second Artillery Corps, was formed in 1966 to manage the country's strategic missiles. Its name was given by then-premier Zhou Enlai in an attempt to keep its true functions secret. The missile force made its public debut in 1984. This is NEWS Plus Special English. China's first domestic violence law may include emotional or psychological abuse and cover cohabitation in order to protect traditionally silent abuse victims. The new draft law noted that the country prohibits any form of domestic violence. Domestic violence is defined as physical or psychological harm inflicted by family members, including beatings, injuries, restraint or forcible limits on physical liberty as well as recurring verbal threats and abuse. An earlier draft, submitted in August, included only physical abuse, but many lawmakers have since argued that the definition was too narrow. China does not have a specialized law on family abuse, and the issue has remained in the shadows for a long time in a country where family conflicts are considered embarrassing private matters. As a result, victims are often afraid to speak out and, in many cases, are turned away by police. This is NEWS Plus Special English. A Chinese court has granted a man who spent more than 11 years behind bars after a false murder conviction more than 1.2 million yuan, roughly 200,000 U.S. dollars, in state compensation. Citing insufficient evidence, a court in central China's Hunan Province overturned the guilty verdict against Zeng Ai-yun, a former graduate student of engineering at Xiangtan University in July. Zeng was convicted in 2004 of murdering his graduate school classmate Zhou Yu-heng. Zeng had been sentenced to death three times by the same court in 2004, 2005 and 2010. The Supreme People's Court rejected the verdicts and ordered a retrial. Another classmate of the victim's, Chen Hua-zhang, was later found to be the real killer. Chen poisoned Zhou with diazepam on Oct. 27, 2003 as he was jealous of the attention Zhou enjoyed from their mentor. Chen deliberately laid a false trail and imputed the murder to Zeng, who was dating the victim's ex-girlfriend. Chen and Zeng were both arrested in Nov, 2003. Zeng was sentenced to death while Chen received life imprisonment. Chen was still sentenced to life imprisonment during the retrial and fined 178,000 yuan as compensation to the victim's family. You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing. Taiwan's education department has increased the quota of mainland students who want to study in a two-year program to achieve a bachelor's degree. The quota will be raised from 1,000 to 1,500 for the academic year of 2016 and 2017. The two-year program is specifically open for students who study in vocational schools but would like to proceed in higher education and obtain a bachelor's degree. Previously only students from southern provinces of Guangdong and Fujian were allowed to study in such programs in Taiwan. The department plans to add another four provinces as well as Beijing and Shanghai. The application will start in February. Compared with those in Europe and North America, colleges in Taiwan are considered a better option for vocational school graduates from the Chinese mainland. Taiwan colleges are known for the good education quality and lower tuition, as well as the convenience of being without language barrier. The new policy is a result of negotiation between the two sides after the historic meeting between President Xi Jinping and Taiwan leader Ma Ying-jeou in Singapore. During the meeting, Ma suggested that the two sides allow more mainland students to study in Taiwan. This is NEWS Plus Special English. A trial run has begun for China's first domestically designed and manufactured magnetic levitation line in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province. The maglev shuttles between Changsha's south railway station and the airport, with one stop in between. It takes around ten minutes to complete the 18-and-half-kilometer journey. According to the operator Hunan Maglev Transport Company, the line uses the "wind chaser" trains designed and manufactured by railway manufacturing giant CRRC in Hunan's Zhuzhou city. The 48-meter-long train can carry 363 people in three carriages, and achieve a maximum speed of 100 kilometers per hour. The domestically produced moderate-speed maglev line costs around 195 million yuan, roughly 30 million U.S. dollars, per kilometer, not including relocation fees. It is highly economical in terms of construction and maintenance costs. You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing. An official circular on reforming China's art and literature awards has urged that appraisals from ordinary people be included as an important parameter. The circular says appraisals from the public, artists and literati should be integrated with commercial indicators, alongside audience rating, box office and circulation. It notes that public popularity and whether the art or literature works features ordinary people's lives will be important indicators to be factored in during evaluation. The circular announces that artists or writers with notorious records or reputations will be barred from competing for awards. It also reveales that the existing 20 national art and literature awards will be reduced to 19, while a large number of their sub-categorized awards are downsized. The Ministry of Culture in April vowed to streamline the chaotic art and literature awards, blaming too many redundant awards ceremonies and appraisals for having caused irregularities and power-for-money deals. The ministry also vowes to regulate government officials' participation in competitions and awards and to forbid them for exerting any influence during award appraisals. You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing. You can access the program by logging onto NEWSPlusRadio.cn. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know by e-mailing us at mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. That's mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. Now the news continues. A 90-minute documentary about Confucius has been screened on China Central Television. The documentary was broadcast on CCTV 10, the science and education channel of the state TV. It was produced by CCTV, in cooperation with Britain's Lion TV, China International Television Corporation and the Dazhong News Group. The program told of the life of Confucius, as well as his impact on Chinese history. It was the first documentary about Confucius made by China and a foreign company. Production took two years. The documentary is comprised of six parts, namely, the man, the legend, the philosophy, the master, the inheritance and the present day. Preparation is underway for a 300-minute domestic edition of documentary in six parts. Born near the present-day town of Qufu in east China's Shandong Province, Confucius lived between 551 BC and 479 BC. He founded a school of thought that influenced later generations and became known as Confucianism. He is believed to be the first person to set up private schools in China and enroll students from all walks of life, including the poor. Confucius is regarded as a symbol of China's culture and intellectuals. There are around 1,300 Confucius temples in China and overseas. This is NEWS Plus Special English. The number of gold coins and plates unearthed from an east China ancient tomb has increased to 378, after archaeologists found another 68 pieces recently. The new finds include 20 gold plates around 22 centimeters long and 10 centimeters wide. Archaeologists say it is the largest discovery of gold coins in any Han Dynasty tomb. The gold coins, most of which weigh around 250 grams each, were unearthed from the tomb of the Marquis of Haihun, in Nanchang City, the capital of east China's Jiangxi Province. The discovery supports the theory that China had significant gold reserve in the Western Han Dynasty. You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing. A film adaptation of the best-selling novel Gui Chui Deng, or "Ghost Blowing Out The Light", has received critical acclaim for its spectacular depiction of tomb raiders and afterlife. Industry sources say the scenes in "Mojin, The Lost Legend" could be an indication that the country's cinema regulators are loosening up on previously forbidden areas. "Ghost Blowing Out The Light" is a fantasy novel written by Zhang Muye about two grave robbers seeking hidden treasures. It was first published online in 2006 and quickly became the bestselling online novel in China with an estimated six million readers. When it was published in print form later the same year, it went on to sell over 500,000 copies. The novel is widely regarded as one of China's most popular works of fantasy. However, turning the work into a film script posed a massive challenge for the producers, Wanda, Huayi Brothers and Enlighten Media. According to an unwritten rule in China's movie regulations, ghosts cannot be portrayed on in movies, and raiding tombs is an illegal activity that should not be presented. However these were the two key elements which had fascinated fans. Coincidently, just three months ago, "Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe", the first feature movie based on some parts of the novel, was fiercely criticized by fans for excessive rewriting of the story. In the movie made by LeTV, ghosts are portrayed as alien creatures who came to earth thousands of years ago. This is NEWS Plus Special English. Second-hand smoke exposure has dropped in China despite an increase of 15 million smokers in the past five years. A domestic smoking report has found that compared with 2010, the second-hand smoking exposure rate fell from 35 percent to 17 percent in primary and middle schools, and from 55 percent to 38 percent in government buildings. The report was released by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Second-hand smoking also dropped in workplaces, restaurants, public transport vehicles and medical institutions. Chinese smoking population has increased to 316 million, or 28 percent of the total targeted population. The smoking rate was 52 percent for males and almost 3 percent for females. That is the end of this edition of NEWS Plus Special English. To freshen up your memory, I'm going to read one of the news items again at normal speed. Please listen carefully. That is the end of today's program. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing. Hope you can join us every day at CRI NEWS Plus Radio, to learn English and learn about the world.

This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing. Here is the news. On the occasion of China unveiling its first domestically-produced large passenger aircraft C919, President Xi Jinping extended his congratulations to all those involved, and underscored safety as the aircraft enters the testing phase. In a written instruction, Xi said safety and quality should be the top priority during preparations for the jet's maiden flight, which is scheduled for next year. He said the team should strive to boost China's equipment manufacturing capability. Premier Li Keqiang also issued an instruction, encouraging the civil aircraft industry to work harder to strengthen China's capacity in high-end equipment manufacturing and make it a real manufacturing power. The C919 was developed by the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China. When it is cleared for commercial use, it is expected to compete with the updated Airbus 320 and Boeing's new-generation 737. The plane has 158 seats and a standard range of 4,075 kilometers. It has received 517 orders from 21 foreign and domestic customers. This is NEWS Plus Special English. A local official in central China's Hunan Province has revoked a statement about the effective date of China's "two-child policy", which placed him at the center of controversy. Zhan Ming, deputy director of the provincial health and family planning commission, was quoted as saying by the Hunan Daily on Oct. 30 that "those pregnant with a second child will not be punished as of today". Zhan's statement was refuted by central authorities. The National Health and Family Planning Commission stressed that local affiliates must implement the current one-child policy until the new policy is ratified by legislators. It urged local authorities in each province to "not carry out the two-child policy willfully". In an interview with Xinhua News Agency, Zhan said his claims were based on the needs of the local population, but neglected related legal procedures. The official said the province did not intend to implement the new policy willfully, and will wait for the time approved by the provincial legislators, before carrying out the policy. The Communist Party of China announced the abolishment of its decades-old one-child policy at the close of a key meeting on Oct. 29 in an attempt to balance population growth and offset the burden of an aging population. According to a communique released after the plenum, a final plan for the policy change will be ratified by the annual session of China's top legislature in March. This is NEWS Plus Special English. （全文见微信周日第三条。）

In the waning days of China's Qing Empire, a riot broke out in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province. After two years of flooding, a starving woman had drowned herself in desperation after an unscrupulous merchant refused to sell her food at a price she could afford. Three days of rioting followed during which symbols of Qing power were destroyed by an angry mob, which then turned its sights on Changsha's Western compound. Historians have long assumed the mob was controlled by the landed gentry, but as nearly every dictator knows, a crowd has a mind of its own. James Joshua Hudson, Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Knox College, describes the riots and some surprising finds he made conducting fieldwork in Hunan that offer a glimpse into the deeply layered tensions on the eve of the downfall of the Qing dynasty.

完整文稿看周六微信第三条，你懂的呦~ This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.Tanzania's anti-poaching crusade received a boost when China donated 50 special vehicles worth 1.3 million U.S. dollars for patrolling in the East African nation's parks and game reserves.The Chinese Ambassador to Tanzania handed over the vehicles to Tanzanian officials in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam.The Chinese government also donated mountaineering jackets, tents, patrol generator sets and mobile radio phones.The vehicles and other facilities will be distributed to national parks and game reserves across the country.The support came days after a Chinese delegation visited Tanzania to enhance cooperation between the two countries and share experiences in the management of natural resources, including wildlife.For the past three years, China had extended support amounting to 30 million U.S. dollars for wildlife protection in Tanzania.Tanzania's elephant population has declined by 60 percent since 2009.This is NEWS Plus Special English.Beijing police have detained six people in connection with a sex video taken in a Beijing fitting room that went viral online.Police authorities said the six were detained on suspicion of spreading obscene content.The police said one of the suspects, surnamed Sun, is a 19-year-old man from northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. Sun was suspected of posting the sex video at Weibo.com, a major micro blogging platform, while the other three were suspected of spreading obscene information.The video, shot on a smartphone, shows a young Chinese couple having sex in a fitting room. The off-screen broadcast indicated it was taken in a Japanese apparel retailer, Uniqlo store, in Sanlitun, an upmarket shopping district in Beijing in mid-April.The couple admitted having sent the video to some friend at Wechat, a mobile chatting app. But it was somehow hacked and posted on the web, drawing fierce criticism from web users.The police are investigating the case. The couple will face punishment if they are found to have deliberately spread the footage.China's criminal law stipulates that those disseminating obscene books, films, pictures and video clips could face up to two years' imprisonment, while those who make obscene products for profit could be sentenced to life. This is NEWS Plus Special English.The police in eastern China have detained over 20 people in the latest crackdown on the production and online trading of fake drugs.The public security authorities in Zhejiang Province seized at least 20,000 boxes of fake drugs and several tons of raw materials, in the crackdown that lasted for more than three months.The drugs were sold in almost all of the provinces across China, with total economic gains reaching 100 million yuan, roughly 16 million U.S. dollars.Among the best-sold fake drugs were slimming capsules and painkillers that contained banned ingredients. Most of the drugs were sold only at online stores on Wechat, China's most popular mobile messaging app.The police said an increasing number of people complained of health problems after using the drugs.Investigations found an illegal drug production and trading hierarchy that involved dozens of people working in Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces.Further investigations are underway.You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. The overall number of cases of adverse drug reactions last year remained on a par with the previous year, but those involving traditional Chinese medicine injections had a noted rise.More than 1.3 million cases of adverse drug reaction were reported in total, a year-on-year increase of almost 1 percent. Injections accounted for 61 percent of the total, up 2 percentage points.That's according to a report released by the China Food and Drug Administration, the public health watchdog. The annual report is a key reference for safety supervision over drugs on the market. The report revealed that traditional Chinese Medicine injections were responsible for almost 130,000 drug reaction cases, up more than 5 percent from the previous year, marking the most significant increase across all types of drugs. Among them, 7 percent were severe cases.Medical experts say that unlike drugs taken orally or applied on the skin, Traditional Chinese Medicine injections usually have more complicated ingredients and are used together with other drugs. Improper dosage or incorrect injection-speed are very likely to induce adverse effects.The administration has urged hospitals to exercise caution when prescribing Traditional Chinese Medicine injections, the main cause of the increasing number of drug reaction cases.This is NEWS Plus Special English.A man in central China has successfully had his severed hand restored to his arm after it was preserved by being grafted to his leg.The patient, surnamed Zhou, is now able to slight move his injured fingers, but his surgeons say he still needs further rehabilitation.This is the second such surgery performed by the team in a hospital in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province. The first such surgery took place in 2013.Zhou lost his left hand in a work accident in another city. He was sent to a local hospital, and was told he needed an amputation. Then he was transferred to the hospital in the provincial capital, with better medical facilities.Surgeons at the hospital could not reattach the hand straight away because the arm was badly hurt and the nerves and tendons needed time to heal.The surgeons grafted the severed hand to the patient's ankle to ensure the blood supply and kept it alive there for more than a month, before they connected the hand and the limb in a 10-hour operation.This is NEWS Plus Special English. A toddler in central Hunan Province has become the first person in the world to have her cranium successfully reconstructed, with the help of 3D printing technology.The three-year-old girl suffered from hydrocephalus, a congenital condition in which an abnormal accumulation of fluid in the cerebral ventricles causes enlargement of the skull and compression of the brain, destroying much of the neural tissue.The condition has left the child bedridden, as her neck cannot support her head, which has grown to four times its normal size.Surgeons at a hospital in Changsha used 3D printing techniques to create a titanium cranium, based on a model of her head.In a 17-hour operation, the surgeons removed a portion of her cranium, drained excess fluid and put the titanium mesh in place.Doctors used an adult-sized cranium implant, allowing room for the toddler to grow. You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. You can access the program by logging onto NEWSPlusRadio.cn. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know by e-mailing us at mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. That'smansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. Now the news continues.New evidence has been found in an archeological site in Beijing, suggesting that the ancestors of modern human beings were able to use fire more than 600,000 years ago.The findings were announced after archeologists spent three years excavating the Zhou-kou-dian fossil site, in the western suburbs of Beijing.Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered a fire site with the remains of sintering soil, and burned rocks and bones.Some animal bones at the site were entirely carbonized and had turned black, a result of burning. Some fire sites are encircled by rocks and lime, resulting from limestone burning.Fossils of "Peking Man" were discovered in the same area in the 1920s. An almost intact skull earned the place the title of one of the birth places of humans.Ashes, burned bones and rocks, as well as charred seeds were also found in 1929, which was taken as proof that "Peking Man" knew how to use fire.However, there has been skepticism which claims that the burning may have been resulted from naturally occurring fire.The researchers say the new evidence is more convincing, because it has been found under the earth untouched, without weather damage. It shows that the "Peking Man" knew how to keep kindling and control fire. This is NEWS Plus Special English.Oxygen matters in the opening match of China's National Basketball League, the NBL, when players from the central plains had to inhale oxygen from time to time.Members of Nanjing city's military team had to be substituted every minute and were forced to inhale oxygen once they sat at the sidelines. They were playing the local team in Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, which lies at an altitude of 3,700 meters above sea level. The time of the game was cut short, from 12 minutes to 10 minutes for each period.The local team won the match 53-32 in their NBL debut. Team Lhasa is the first ever professional basketball team in Tibet.The NBL is a basketball league which operates parallel with the better known CBA, the Chinese Basketball Association, and is smaller in scale and has a shorter history. There are nine teams in the league for the 2015 season, while the CBA has 20 teams. You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. A table-tennis table and two professional players have joined musicians on the stage in Shanghai, marking a bold move by American composer Andy Akiho. The Ping Pong Concerto, which debuted at the closing ceremony of the Shanghai Music Festival, combined the rhythms of a bouncing ball with violin and percussion.Akiho says the ping pong ball is a unique musical instrument and its bouncing is in perfect harmony with stringed instruments.The New York-based composer said he has always wanted to combine the rhythms of sport and music.Among the team members are U.S. table-tennis players Michael Landers and Ariel Hsing. Hsing is an American of Chinese descent and began playing table-tennis at age seven. She says this was the first time she has played in a dress and high heels, instead of sportswear.Instead of hitting for points, she was requested to play in tune and target the ball at the bass drum from time to time to create different sound effects.The concerto is scheduled to be staged in Beijing this autumn.This is NEWS Plus Special English.The Shanghai Disney Resort will feature attractions unseen in the five other Disney resorts worldwide when it opens next year.According to a plan unveiled in Shanghai recently, new attractions will include those based on Marvel comics and Star Wars, and others inspired by the Chinese culture. They will distinguish the Shanghai resort from its peers in the United States, Europe and other parts of Asia.The "Garden of the Twelve Friends" uses Disney and Pixar characters to recreate the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac; and a section inspired by the new "Pirates of the Caribbean" film will feature a live stunt show."Wandering Moon Teahouse" honors the restless, creative spirit of China's itinerant poets and the diverse and beautiful landscapes that inspired them. The "Restaurant" features authentic Chinese architecture, combined with miniature natural landscapes.In addition, the resort will provide traditional Shanghai food including Shaomai, a steamed dim sum made of sticky rice, pork mince, Chinese mushrooms and onions, to cater to Chinese visitors.That is the end of this edition of NEWS Plus Special English. To freshen up your memory, I'm going to read one of the news items again at normal speed. Please listen carefully.That is the end of today's program. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Hope you can join us every day at CRI NEWS Plus Radio, to learn English and learn about the world.

In this shorter than usual episode, Laszlo introduces a little piece of culture taken from the southern portion of Hunan Province. Generations of illiterate women from a single county on the Hunan-Guangxi border, denied education, created their own writing script. Men never learned it and so it was used by these women to communicate with each other and to record their secret thoughts and inspirations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this shorter than usual episode, Laszlo introduces a little piece of culture taken from the southern portion of Hunan Province.  Generations of illiterate women from a single county on the Hunan-Guangxi border, denied education, created their own writing script.   Men never learned it and so it was used by these women to communicate with each other and to record their secret thoughts and inspirations.  Almost lost to posterity, Nüshu has made somewhat of a revival and today others are learning it and keeping it alive. 

It is the only form of writing invented by women and for women. Its name is Nv Shu. Literally meaning Women's Book, it's a phonetic writing system devised by female speakers of the Shaozhou Tuhua dialect who were once banned from receiving formal education. Used to impart wisdom from one generation to the next, it passes on advice on how to be a good mother, daughter, sister and friend. Originated in the remote villages of Jiang Yong County in China's Hunan Province, Nv Shu is now considered a dying language by UNESCO. A few years ago, award-winning composer Tan Dun came across a story about this ancient form of writing while he was working in Taipei. The story was about a group of women from Hunan who came to Beijing wanting to see Chairman Mao in 1950. But their accent was so odd and unusual that nobody understood what they were saying. When UNESCO heard about this, linguistic expert were sent to investigate. According to the book, this was how Nv Shu was discovered. Captivated by the story, Tan Dun started his own research in Hunan. "What attracted me was the elegance of the characters in Nv Shu. They don't look like they were invented by a group of uneducated women. It surprised me that when all the characters are put together, they create an incredibly beautiful image. I discovered that their songs are also very moving. They are passed down from mothers to daughters and some of them are age-old melodies from ancient times." After five years of ethnomusicological research, Tan Dun emerged with a multimedia masterpiece which includes a 13-movement work of video, solo harp and orchestra. The approximately 40-minute performance includes short films of women singing songs written in Nv Shu alongside orchestral music. The songs in the video are used as an accompaniment to the live music. In 2013, Nv Shu: The Secret Songs of Women premiered in America by the Philadephia Orchestra. This year, from May 21 to June 6, the band will be sharing this cultural gem with Chinese audiences on their tour of China. The tour starts at Beijing's National Centre for the Performing Arts. This is the third year in a row that the orchestra has been invited to perform at The Egg. Philadelphia orchestra president Allison Vulgamore said it feels like coming home. "It's a tremendous feeling to be walking back inside this beautiful structure. This iconic The Egg, the National Centre for the Performing Arts �C our home away from home. And it feels normal now. It doesn't feel new but it feels full of excitement and anticipation." There will also be performances in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hunan - the birthplace of Nv Shu. Several singers who are in the video accompaniment have been invited to the performance in Changsha, the capital city of Hunan. This trip also marks many firsts for the band. It's their first time performing Nv Shu in Beijing, their first time in Hunan, and the first international tour for conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Touted as one of the best conductor of the 21st century by British newspaper The Guardian, Nezet-Seguin has lead many world famous orchestras including the Rotterdam Philharmonic and the Orchestre Metropolitain in Montreal. However, despite his many accomplishments, he said that it was challenging interpreting the different elements of Nv Shu. "It is a piece which blends images of singing and cry singing. So people were there but not really live. We have to create the music live. This is actually something very difficult to do, on a technical level and also understanding the breathing of Chinese singing of this special language. So, of course, I found it very difficult. It needed a lot of studying." With the guidance from Tan Dun, conductor Nezet-Seguin was able to overcome these difficulties. He says that being able to perform Nv Shu at its place of origin would be an unforgettable experience. "To play in the Hunan province, to play this piece, will be something that will be a unique moment in my life. I will do this with a lot of humility and try to let the music of the master speak as deeply as possible, to respect its character and to touch the audiences, which is what we always want to do." The performance in Hunan is scheduled on May 27.

A group of knife-wielding assailants have attacked civilians on a street in Changsha City, capital of central China's Hunan Province. Reporters have seen at least one body lying on the ground at the crime site. Further details are not immediately available.

Composer and self-described “musical anthropologist” Tan Dun (perhaps best familiar for his Oscar-winning score to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) creates works that bridge time, place and culture through the fusion of ancient and avant-garde sounds Celebrating the vocal, instrumental, and environmental sounds of the remote Chinese countryside, Tan explores the minority cultures of Hunan Province, where he was born, and brings it into play with modern instruments and orchestrations. Expanding on the video and audio field recordings gathered for his multimedia concerto The Map, a Concerto for Cello, Video, and Orchestra, Tan and scholar Joanna Lee discuss the vanishing musical cultures of ethnic minorities in western Hunan and reflect on the creative challenges of preserving cultural legacies while creating new music fusing traditional, indigenous and contemporary sounds.

Composer and self-described “musical anthropologist” Tan Dun (perhaps best familiar for his Oscar-winning score to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) creates works that bridge time, place and culture through the fusion of ancient and avant-garde sounds Celebrating the vocal, instrumental, and environmental sounds of the remote Chinese countryside, Tan explores the minority cultures of Hunan Province, where he was born, and brings it into play with modern instruments and orchestrations. Expanding on the video and audio field recordings gathered for his multimedia concerto The Map, a Concerto for Cello, Video, and Orchestra, Tan and scholar Joanna Lee discuss the vanishing musical cultures of ethnic minorities in western Hunan and reflect on the creative challenges of preserving cultural legacies while creating new music fusing traditional, indigenous and contemporary sounds.