BEIJING — A Beijing property developer said Saturday that it has terminated cooperation with the new ‘‘Transformers’’ movie, wants Paramount Pictures to make edits to it, and is asking China to suspend screenings of the blockbuster.
I won't be going to see that one.
The company owns the Pangu Plaza, a dragon-shaped hotel, office, and mall complex that extends the length of six football fields and is featured in ‘‘Transformers: Age of Extinction,’’ the latest installment of the hit franchise.
The Beijing Pangu Investment Co. Ltd. said in an e-mail that Paramount and two Chinese associate partners failed to fulfill their obligations in a sponsorship deal.
‘‘The loss of rights and interests not only caused the Pangu company’s original business plan to fail, incurring huge losses, more seriously, it has affected Pangu Plaza’s image and reputation,’’ the statement said.
Pangu said it is suing its Chinese partners for contract fraud and demanding that Paramount delete scenes from the movie that feature images of its logo or properties. It said it has also asked the Chinese government’s film regulator to suspend or stop screenings of the movie, which is due to open in Chinese cinemas June 27.
Pangu says it provided at least $1.6 million in funding and that its Chinese partners never delivered on pledges to hold the movie premiere at Pangu’s hotel and feature images of its property in trailers and movie posters.
Instead, the movie’s world premiere was held in Hong Kong on Thursday and was attended by stars including Mark Wahlberg and the good-guy robot, Optimus Prime.
The film’s debut in the southern Chinese metropolis ahead of its launch in New York next week is the latest sign of Hollywood’s increasing focus on China’s booming film market.
China is the world’s second-largest film market, with box-office revenues up by nearly a third in the first quarter after rising 27.5 percent last year to $3.6 billion.
The property developer also said its Chinese partners told Pangu it would be allowed to manufacture and sell ‘‘Transformers’’ merchandise authorized by Paramount and hold an exhibition of the movie’s filmmaking equipment on its premises for at least eight months.
Paramount did not immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment, while calls to the Chinese partners named in Pangu’s statement — Jiaflix China and the Beijing Chengxin Shengshi Sports Culture Development Company Ltd. — were unanswered.
--more--"
Hope you liked the preview.
"Hong Kong votes on voting reform" Associated Press June 21, 2014
HONG KONG — Hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers voted Friday in an unofficial referendum on democratic reform that has set the stage for a showdown with Beijing.
Tensions are boiling over in Hong Kong, which came back under Chinese control in 1997, about how to choose the city’s next leader.
Organizers of the Occupy Central with Love and Peace movement said that in the first six hours, about 165,000 ballots were cast on proposals for electoral reform.
The three options on Friday’s ballot all call for the public to nominate candidates, while Beijing has insisted that candidates be vetted by a Beijing-friendly committee.
--more--"
"Hong Kong vote derided by China draws thousands" Associated Press June 23, 2014
HONG KONG — Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents lined up to vote Sunday, joining hundreds of thousands of others who cast electronic ballots in the first three days of an unofficial referendum on democratic reform that Beijing has blasted as a farce.
Tensions have soared in Hong Kong over how much say residents of the former British colony can have in choosing their next leader, who is currently hand-picked by a 1,200-member committee of mostly pro-Beijing elites.
Beijing, which has pledged to allow Hong Kong residents to choose their own leader starting in 2017, has balked at letting members of the public nominate their own candidates, saying they would have to be vetted by a Beijing-friendly committee.
Pro-democratic organizers of the Occupy Central with Love and Peace movement are offering voters three proposals on public nomination.
They have vowed to hold a mass protest if the island’s government, which has carried out a consultation on electoral reform, does not come up with a proposal that meets their standards.
The plan, which involves rallying at least 10,000 people to shut down the city’s central business district, has alarmed businesses in the Asian financial hub.
By 10 p.m. Sunday, nearly 700,000 ballots had been cast since voting started Friday, including about 440,000 through a smartphone app.
--more--"
Just seeing such a thing in the agenda-pushing, controlled-opposition promoter I call a paper after they pissed all over the well-meaning Occupy Wall Street kids is transforming me.
Looks like the Chinese were listening, though:
"Suddenly, Chinese offering jobs in US" by Paul Wiseman | Associated Press June 24, 2014
PINE HILL, Ala. — Burdened with Alabama’s highest unemployment rate, long abandoned by textile mills and furniture plants, Wilcox County desperately needs jobs.
They’re coming, and from a most unlikely place: Henan Province, China.
Then there is no need for a war!
Henan’s Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tube Group opened a plant here last month. It will employ more than 300.
‘‘Jobs that pay $15 an hour are few and far between,’’ says Dottie Gaston, an official in nearby Thomasville.
What’s happening in Pine Hill is starting to happen across America.
After decades of siphoning jobs from the United States, China is creating some. Chinese companies invested a record $14 billion in the United States last year, according to Rhodium Group, a research firm. Collectively, they employ more than 70,000 Americans, up from virtually none a decade ago.
Powerful forces — narrowing wage gaps, tumbling US energy prices, the vagaries of currency markets — are pulling Chinese companies across the Pacific. Mayors and economic development officials have lined up to welcome Chinese investors. Southern states, touting low labor and land costs, have been aggressive.
In Pine Hill, tax breaks, Southern hospitality, and a tray of homemade banana pudding helped, too.
‘‘Get off the plane and the mayor is waiting for you,’’ says Hong Kong billionaire Ronnie Chan.
You got enough green they don't care what your color.
In March, Dothan, Ala., held a two-day US-China manufacturing symposium, drawing dozens of potential Chinese investors. On sale were T-shirts reading: ‘‘Ni hao, y’all’’ — combining the Chinese version of ‘‘hello’’ with a colloquial Southernism.
A Chinese company, in a deal negotiated before the symposium, announced it would bring a 3-D printing operation to Dothan.
Among other Chinese projects in the United States:
■ In Moraine, Ohio, glassmaker Fuyao Glass Industry Group is taking over a plant that General Motors abandoned in 2008 and creating at least 800 jobs.
■ In Lancaster County, S.C., Chinese textile manufacturer Keer Group is investing $218 million in a plant to make industrial yarn and will employ 500. South Carolina nudged the deal along with a $4 million grant.
■ In Gregory, Texas, Tianjin Pipe is investing over $1 billion in a factory that makes pipes for oil and gas drillers. It will have 50 to 70 employees by the end of this year and 400 to 500 by the end of 2017.
The United States and China have long had a lopsided relationship: China makes things; America buys them. The US trade deficit in goods with China last year hit a record $318 billion.
And for three decades, numerous US manufacturers have moved operations to China.
Not telling us anything we don't already know.
The flow is at least starting to move the other way. One reason is that in the past decade, the cost of labor, adjusted for productivity gains, has surged 187 percent at Chinese factories, compared with just 27 percent in the United States, according to Boston Consulting Group.
In addition, Chinese electricity costs rose 66 percent, more than twice the United States’ increase.
And the value of China’s currency has risen more than 30 percent against the US dollar over the past decade. The higher yuan has raised the cost of Chinese goods sold abroad and, conversely, made US goods more affordable in China.
Those rising costs have cut China’s competitive edge. In 2004, manufacturing cost 14 percent less in China than in the United States; that advantage has narrowed to 5 percent. If the trend toward higher wages, energy costs, and a higher currency continues, Boston Consulting predicts, US manufacturing will be less expensive than China’s by 2018.
Somehow I can't help but feel that all this good news is dropping the standard of living here as the corporate shoe is now on the Chinese foot.
Cost isn’t the only allure. As Chinese companies build more sophisticated products, they want to work more directly with US customers.
‘‘Being close to the marketplace is good for everybody,’’ says Loretta Lee, a Hong Kong entrepreneur who opened a shoe factory in Tennessee.
I always thought so, but U.S. corporations thought otherwise.
Wilcox County — with 15.5 percent unemployment, Alabama’s highest — qualified for extra aid. It landed $8 million in state and federal grants to help build an annex road and sewage lines for the Chinese project.
The county also gave the company 100 acres of a 274-acre industrial park it bought for $1.2 million and a break on property taxes. Alabama offered to reimburse the company up to $20 million of its costs for building the $100 million factory. It will get the full amount if it ends up hiring 500 people.
Still, culture and language can remain a barrier. Local officials hastily replaced a black-and-white banner welcoming Golden Dragon after learning that the colors signified a funeral to the Chinese.
‘‘Nobody wants a faux pas,’’ says John Clyde Riggs, executive director of a regional planning commission.
--more--"
"Trade between Boston and China could soar" by Jay Fitzgerald | Globe Correspondent June 20, 2014
The new nonstop flight comes as business relations between Massachusetts and China have already soared, and local executives, economists, and political leaders predict that trade between the two regions will now only get much larger.
Exports from Massachusetts to China have more than tripled in the past decade, to $1.97 billion in 2013, making China the second largest buyer of products made in the state, according to WiserTrade.org, which tracks international trade, and the expanded connections to China might not end with just the Beijing flights. The Massachusetts Port Authority said it is in discussions with other airlines about adding flights from Shanghai and Hong Kong to Logan.
“We work closely with the business and political leaders to provide the services that are needed, and having Hainan fly nonstop between Boston and Beijing will be a catalyst,” Massport chief executive Thomas P. Glynn said.
Massport has been aggressively courting new nonstop service with other international destinations, recently adding direct service to Istanbul, Dubai, and Tokyo.
Still the underlying driver of improved trade between Massachusetts and China is the simple fact that each has what the other wants.
“It’s an economic marriage made in heaven,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “China and the US economies are now tied at the hip, but it’s even more so in Boston.”
Boston area companies want access to China’s huge and vibrant market for its products and services, as well as its massive pool of lower-cost workers to make those products. In turn, China wants access to Boston’s prestigious higher-education schools and its booming technology sector.
Good thing China is sending the jobs here and buying up U.S. companies.
Indeed, the top export products to China are high-end machinery for manufacturing, computers, and electronic items, and medical devices and pharmaceutical products, according to WiserTrade.org data. And when Chinese companies can’t import tech products, they buy them outright.
Or steal them, from what I've been told.
Related: Powering Up This Post About China
Time to power down.
--more--"
I'm sure they can find a good place.
"China indicts six in death of suspect" Associated Press September 06, 2013
BEIJING — Chinese prosecutors have indicted six men in the death of a state industry executive who was allegedly dunked in ice water during questioning in a case that points to abuses during internal investigations by the Communist Party.
Wait a minute? The Chinese are prosecuting official authorities who tortured?
The indictment, details of which were widely published in Chinese media, describes how 42-year-old Yu Qiyi drowned after having his head repeatedly pushed into a bucket of ice water.
Yu was detained March 1 by agents from the party’s corruption watchdog in the eastern province of Zhejiang, and he died 38 days later after being rushed to a hospital.
While under questioning, he was held in a detention center run by the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
Critics say it is a body that operates without legal constraints and frequently coerces confessions from those under investigation....
If that isn't the pot media mouthpiece hollering kettle.
--more--"
"China sets retrial in abuser’s death" Associated Press June 25, 2014
BEIJING — China’s highest court overturned a death sentence and ordered a retrial for a woman who killed and dismembered her abusive husband, a ruling welcomed Tuesday by advocates of the country’s often-silent victims of domestic violence.
The woman’s attorney, Guo Jianmei, said she received confirmation from the Supreme People’s Court, the country’s highest court, about its ruling in the case of Li Yan, who had been sentenced to death in 2011 for slaying her husband.
Li has become a rallying point for activists against domestic abuse in China, where police and courts commonly turn a blind eye to victims of domestic violence.
Feng Yuan, a Beijing women’s rights activist, called the court ruling a ‘‘positive development’’ and said she hoped that during the retrial, ‘‘the court would make a fair ruling that considers the whole picture of domestic abuse and not just the violent incident on its own, so that it would give victims of domestic abuse a glimmer of hope.’’
The high court’s ruling means Li will probably be spared execution after the retrial, a victory for the hundreds of lawyers, intellectuals, and activists who signed a petition early last year urging the court to reject the penalty.
Li’s younger brother, Li Dehuai, also said Tuesday his sister wrote to him about the ruling in a letter he received Monday.
‘‘The court said it was overturning the sentence because the facts are unclear and the evidence is ambiguous,’’ Li Dehuai said by phone.
--more--"
Related: Raids target militants in China
This might result in officials rounding up people to take the blame for various crimes, while the actual criminals go free, said Human Rights Watch researcher Maya Wang. Beijing says the attackers are religious extremists with ties to overseas Islamic terror groups, but officials have publicly shown little evidence to support that."
Cracks you up, doesn't it?
"China moves oil rig closer to Vietnam" Associated Press June 20, 2014
BEIJING — China said Thursday it is moving a second oil rig closer to Vietnam’s coast, showing its determination to press its territorial claims and continue searching for resources in disputed waters despite a tense confrontation with Vietnam over another oil rig to the south.
The 1,970-foot-long rig is being towed southeast of its current position south of Hainan Island and will be in its new location closer to Vietnam by Friday, the Maritime Safety Administration said on its website.
Vietnam’s government isn’t expected to react strongly to the placement of the second rig because it lies far to the north of the politically sensitive waters surrounding the Paracel Islands, where ships from the two countries have been ramming each other for more than 40 days.
A Vietnamese Foreign Ministry official said Hanoi believes that no country should take unilateral action in contested waters, but that China has explored the area previously without causing a crisis in relations.
The shifting of the rig came as officials from both sides said they made no progress in talks Wednesday over the deployment of the other Chinese rig on May 1 that sparked the current standoff. Each country claims the Paracels as its territory and accuses the other of instigating the ship rammings around the rig.
--more--"
Related: Vietnam Initiates Violence Against China
Thankfully, China kept its stereotypical cool.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"In a first, China sends a minister to Taiwan" Associated Press June 26, 2014
TAIPEI — China has sent its first ever ministerial-level official to Taiwan for four days of meetings to rebuild ties with the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own.
Related: China and Taiwan Are Talking
Quite a contrast in coverage.
Protests in Taipei had set back relations earlier this year — and Zhang Zhijun had to go around scores of anti-China demonstrators to enter a hotel for the talks — but he said he was very happy to be the first Taiwan Affairs Office minister to visit the island.
‘‘To reach Taiwan from Beijing I flew three hours, but to take that step took no less than 65 years,’’ he said in remarks opening the meeting with his counterpart Wang Yu-chi.
China has described the trip as a chance for Zhang to understand the island better. Analysts say he will likely keep a low profile as he travels around Taiwan through Saturday, avoiding strong political statements during scheduled chats with students, low-income people, and a figure in Taiwan’s anti-China chief opposition party.
China and Taiwan have been separately ruled since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s. China sees the island as part of its territory that eventually must be reunified — by force if necessary — despite a Taiwanese public largely wary of the notion of Chinese rule.
But they sure are not moving in that direction, as much as my war-mongering pre$$ wishes it.
In 2008, Beijing set aside its military threats to sign agreements binding its economy to that of the investment-hungry island.
In other words, they did it the exact opposite way that AmeriKa would.
Dialogue opened that year as Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou agreed to put off political issues to build trust and improve the island’s economy through tie-ups with China’s much larger one. The two sides have signed 21 deals, boosting two-way trade to $124.4 billion last year and bringing in about 3 million mainland tourists, who were once all but banned.
Going to be very difficult for the U.S. to foment a war in the straight now.
--more--"
