China Ink

Survivor bias
The country has been gripped by the successful rescue of 115 miners at Wangjialing in Shanxi province. Many survived eight…
Apr 16, 2010 (WiC 56)

A miracle that so many survived? The state press gave the rescue efforts blanket coverage and celebrated the survival of the 115 miners with obvious relief. Many drew wider lessons. It was an “amazing, miraculous rescue”, ...

Home, Swede home
After months of waiting, Geely has finally got its hands on Volvo. The history of automotive M&A is not a…
Apr 1, 2010 (WiC 55)

The significance of the deal Last Sunday, Chinese carmaker Geely Holdings signed a deal to purchase the Volvo brand from Ford Motor for a total consideration of $2.7 billion, the largest ever cross-border M&A deal made by ...

A searching question
Google’s withdrawal from China has been as long and laboured as Napoleon’s 1812 retreat from Moscow. But has it been…
Mar 26, 2010 (WiC 54)

A case of the search for truth over the search for profit? On Monday, Google (finally) shut down its search engine in China and moved it to Hong Kong. The China Daily lamented that Google’s decision was a “lose-lose ...

Road to nowhere
General Motors announced last week that it had dropped efforts to sell its Hummer operations to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial…
Mar 5, 2010 (WiC 51)

Why did the deal fall through? It was the timing – according to Tengzhong – which has complained that it couldn’t get government approvals “within the proposed deal timeframe”. But spokesmen from the Ministry of ...

Seek and you shall not find
Google’s threat to pull out of China causes a blizzard of media commentary.
Jan 15, 2010 (WiC 45)

Why would Google abandon China? Google is fed up with being attacked by cyber hackers, reports the Wall Street Journal, and may shut down Google.cn and the firm’s offices in China. This bombshell quickly stirred dramatic ...

The definitive media storm
Briton Akmal Shaikh was executed for heroin smuggling on December 30th
Jan 8, 2010 (WiC 44)

A matter of sovereignty, above all else? Stop ignoring the laws and dignity of developing nations, fumed Xinhua. Foreign criticism only highlights European chauvinism, agreed the China Daily. Shaikh, like anyone else, had ...

An umbrella saves the day?
Obama seeks shelter from the weather, and newfound Chinese confidence
Nov 20, 2009 (WiC 39)

he World News Journal thought that the “opportunities for engagement” between the two countries were increasingly “rich and stable”. But Xinhua, like most of the Chinese press, preferred to highlight the parts of the discussions that ...

Walking into a minefield
Western newspapers pillory a (possible) Chinese mining investment in Guinea.
Oct 23, 2009 (WiC 35)

So has China’s investment in Guinea been welcomed? The Chinese press isn’t particularly enthusiastic about the deal – a $7 billion mining investment by the China International Fund – and gave it very few column ...

Welcome, comrade
What did Wen Jiabao do for his Golden Week holiday? He opted for a three day citybreak in Pyongyang, with…
Oct 9, 2009 (WiC 34)

So the trip was a big deal?

Wen Jiabao was the first Chinese prime minister to visit Pyongyang since 1991, according to state media. China remains North ...

Raining on the parade
Foreign and Chinese media offer widely differing views on the National Day Parade, its organisation and its significance.
Oct 2, 2009 (WiC 33)

A well-prepared event? The Chinese media evidently thought so. The two and a half hour parade went off without a hitch. About 108,000 people marched past Tiananmen Gate saluting the country’s leaders. The event also featured ...

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