News roundup: Chinese state media group invests in gay dating app

Top China news for February 8, 2017. Get this daily digest delivered to your inbox by signing up atย supchina.com/subscribe.


The Beijing News and the pink dollar

TechNodeย reportsย that โ€œChinese gay chat and hook-up appโ€ Bluedย has signed a deal to take tens of millions of yuan in strategic funding from the โ€œinvestment arm of The Beijing News,โ€ a newspaper group founded in 2003ย as a joint venture between several state-owned media companies. The investment is intended to expand Bluedโ€™s service offering and global footprint โ€” the companyโ€™s app already supports 13 languages, and the company has offices in Thailand, Vietnam, and the U.K. Blued is already profitable, with most of its revenues coming from live streaming and mobile marketing services. The company says that the new investment will help to grow revenue from membership, gaming, and healthcare services.

In December, The New York Timesย published a profileย (paywall) of Bluedโ€™s founder, a former policeman who was forced to resign in 2012 when his superiors discovered he was running a gay community website that was the first incarnation of Blued.

Homosexual behavior used to be illegal in China, prosecuted as โ€œhooliganismโ€ (ๆตๆฐ“็ฝช liรบmรกng zuรฌ), until that crime was removed from the law books in 1997. In 2001, homosexuality was taken off the Chinese classification of mental disorders. The LGBT community is still somewhat stigmatized, but as this story suggests, there is growing acceptance from the government and society at large. You can listen to a Sinica Podcastย about Chinaโ€™s LGBT community here.

Foreign exchange reserves dip below $3 trillion: Xinhuaย says donโ€™t panic

Yesterday we notedย that official Chinese numbers showed that by the end of January, the โ€œpsychologicalโ€ threshold of $3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves was crossed, down from a peak of nearly $4 trillion in June 2014. Bothย Quartzย and The New York Timesย (paywall) attribute the drop to Chinaโ€™s central bank spending โ€œbillions of dollars from its reserves each monthโ€ to prop up the value of the yuan. Meanwhile, Xinhua News Agencyย published an editorialย in Chinese written in a rather informal tone that says there is no need to panic, and attributing the drop below the $3 trillion mark to seasonal factors such as travel abroad during the Chinese New Year period. Furthermore, Xinhuaย says, the central bankโ€™s strategy is to โ€œshow its sword but not make any moves,โ€ a kung fu metaphor for using inaction to defeat an opponent.


Mari-Cha Lion exhibition in Hong Kong

Our featured partner this week has a fascinating cross-cultural art exhibition in Hong Kong running until February 19. The centerpiece is the Mari-Cha Lion, a rare mid-11th- to mid-12th-century South Italian bronze sculpture bearing Arabic decorations, on show together with a selection of Asian objects from the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection and other private collections, as well as contemporary artworks by seven Asian artists. Click hereย for details.


China controversy at Vatican conference on organ trafficking

On Monday we notedย that Dr. Huang Jiefu, a top health official from China, was set to attend a conference at the Vatican on organ trafficking on Tuesday. Since Dr. Huang officially acknowledgedย it in 2005, the practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners for transplants in China has been extremely controversial โ€” and criticism has continued despite China insisting that the practice was eliminated in 2015. Today the South China Morning Postย reportsย that Dr. Huang โ€œprovided scant data to rebut critics.โ€ Conference attendees called on Beijing โ€œto allow independent scrutinyโ€ of its medical centers, and many voiced concern that Chinaโ€™s assurances were โ€œnot enough to prove it no longer harvests organs from executed prisoners.โ€

For more background on controversial organ donation regulations in China, see thisย South China Morning Postย report. Chinaโ€™s attendance at the conference is also seen as part of the recent outreach between Chinese and Vatican officials: For more, listen to this Sinica Podcastย and a follow-up Q&Aย with Ian Johnson, a veteran journalist and scholar of religious issues in China.


Live Sinicaย tapings in Beijing

If youโ€™re in Beijing on February 11 or 14, please come to a live taping of the Sinica Podcast โ€” see the details here.

โ€”Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor in Chief


This issue of the The China Projectย newsletter was produced by Sky Canaves, Lucas Niewenhuis, and Jiayun Feng. More China stories worth your time are curated below, with the most important ones at the top of each section.


BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY:

  • โ€˜Irrationalโ€™ coal plants may hamper Chinaโ€™s climate change effortsย / NYT (paywall)
    Despite Chinaโ€™s commitmentย on the global stage to combating climate change and the rise of public angerย over air pollution, at least four coal-to-gas plants have begun operating in China over the past four years. According to a 2014 report issued by Greenpeace East Asia, governments and companies across China had plans to build 50 such plants, which together would produce an estimated 1.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year. The existing plants are often located in areas that have a sparse population but abundant coal resources, such as the frontier region in Xinjiang, to meet the massive gas demand in big cities like Shanghai and Beijing, which need to limit coal use significantly under the tightened pollution control policies announced in 2013.
  • South Korean theme park in China halted amid missile tensionย / Yahoo News
    China has retaliated against South Korea since the announcement in July 2016ย that the U.S. and its northeast Asian ally would deploy an advanced missile defense system to counter the threat from nuclear-armed North Korea. China sees the move as an unwelcome change in the strategic balance of the region, and has responded with commercial pressures: In August 2016, Chinese TV stations were toldย that programs featuring South Korean pop stars would not be approved. In January this year, we notedย that performances in China by two prominent South Korean musicians were canceled. This week brings newsย that Chinese authorities have suspended a multi-billion-dollar theme park project in the northeastern city of Shenyang planned by the South Korean conglomerate Lotte. Meanwhile, after an electric car from Hyundai failed to gain approval for sale in China, probably as part of the same commercial pushback against THAAD, the South Korean auto maker saidย it may procure batteries from Chinese companies, apparently an attempt to win back the good graces of the Chinese authorities.
  • Joyous Africans take to the rails, with Chinaโ€™s helpย / NYT (paywall)
    In January, the first electric and transnational railway in Africa made its inaugural run from the capital of Djibouti toward Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. Behind the remarkable project is Chinaโ€™s ambition to โ€œtransform the way Africans travel and do business with each other, and the rest of the worldโ€ by constructing rail projects as part of the new Silk Road initiative. In contrast to Americaโ€™s lack of development efforts in Africa, China is enthusiastic about building railroads, schools, and stadiums on the continent, and became Africaโ€™s biggest trading partner in 2009. In Djibouti alone, โ€œChina is placing more than $14 billion worth of bets,โ€ which include three ports, two airports, and a pipeline.


POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS:

  • Mayor of Beijing is put in charge of military reform groupย / SCMP
    Cai Qi ่”กๅฅ‡, the newly appointed mayor of Beijing, continued to make waves on Wednesday (see hereย for his waves on Tuesday) as he took charge of a largely symbolic but nonetheless unusually high-profile role for a city mayor. A Beijing-based political commentator noted that โ€œCai is very likely to be the party chief of Beijing, considering how trusted he is,โ€ referring to a position of national importance that Beijingโ€™s mayor normally ascends to, but which Cai appears to be fast-tracked toward. Cai is said to beย a close associate of President Xi Jinping, and part of the โ€œZhejiang Cliqueโ€ that worked under him when he was party chief of Zhejiang Province from 2002 to 2007.
  • Amid tensions, China planning policies to attract Taiwaneseย / ABC News
    Around 1 million Taiwanese live, work, or study in mainland China, and Chinaโ€™s Taiwan Affairs Office has announced upcoming incentives to further boost โ€œeconomic and social integration.โ€ At the same time, however, Jing Daily notesย that Chinese tourism to Taiwan has been discouraged over the past year, which has been seen as punishment for Tsai Ing-wenโ€™s governmentโ€™s frosty attitude to Beijing. Additionally, since last October, a Chinese state-owned tour company with a Taiwan package has been directingย tourists to areas of the island that are supportive of the more Beijing-friendly Kuomintang party, and away from Tsai Ing-wenโ€™s bases of support.


SOCIETY AND CULTURE:

  • China vows to continue surrogacy crackdownย / Xinhua
    A long-simmering debate over surrogate motherhood in China boiled overย last week, as Party mouthpiece the Peopleโ€™s Dailyย published a controversial articleย (in Chinese) calling for a relaxation of surrogacy bans. In response to the widespread speculation that China will legalize surrogacy soon to boost childbirth rates, a spokesperson from Chinaโ€™s National Health and Family Planning Commission said at a press conference that China still takes a hardline stance on the practice of surrogacy. On Weibo, some internet users applaudedย the statement as โ€œthe right attitude from the government,โ€ whereas others viewed the article as the governmentโ€™s attempt to test the publicโ€™s attitudes toward surrogacy and the newly released announcement as a product of its failure. For more discussion regarding this topic, you can read this threadย on Weibo (in Chinese).
  • China investigates โ€˜rare pangolin banquetโ€™ in Guangxiย / BBC News
    Chinese authorities have ordered an investigation into allegations that local officials in the southern province of Guangxi held a lavish feast that included meat of the endangered pangolin, an anteater-like mammal with a scaled body. The investigation came after a Weibo post in July 2015 by a user named Ah_cal. โ€œThis is my first time eating it and it tasted really good. I have already deeply fallen in love with this taste of wildlife!โ€ said the post, which included several images of cooked meat and bones. After the post was discovered and drew outrage from internet users, the Peopleโ€™s Dailyย posted a short videoย on Weibo to warn people not to eat pangolin, as itโ€™s in danger of extinction. However, most internet users ridiculed the post. โ€œWe normal people canโ€™t afford pangolin meat. Why donโ€™t you send this directly to government officials?โ€ one commenter wrote.


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