The top headline of today’s Beijing News is about new standards for property management companies to levy management fees on residents. The measures hope to alleviate the tensions between greedy management companies that try to gouge their captive customers.

The photo however sets the tone for the news in China for the next week or two: Spring Festival news. The photo shows a fireworks sales point in Beijing.

The fireworks craziness – to celebrate the Chinese new year – starts today and won’t end until Lantern Festival (元宵节) which this year falls on February 28.

Is a ban on eating dog meat cultural imperialism? Al Jazeera’s Melissa Chan reports. See also on Danwei: Cats and dogs in the animal cruelty law.

Peter Spurrier from Blacksmith Books contributed this introduction

“Diamond Hill was one of the poorest and most backward of villages in Hong Kong at a time when Hong Kong itself was poor and backward,” says Feng Chi-shun. “We moved there in 1956 when I was almost 10. I left when I was 19. Those were the formative years of my life. It’s a time that I remember well and cherish.”

Feng’s memoir Diamond Hill describes an era of gambling and gangsters, Suzie Wong and squatter villages, fires and food stalls, and the Kowloon Walled City and its white powder. “A time when people were poor, but life was rich,” he says. The world that he grew up in no longer exists, but his book – the first ever on the Diamond Hill refugee settlement, in either Chinese or English – offers a candid picture of what life was like for most Hong Kong residents in the 1950s.

It was a time of great poverty for many, especially those who had newly arrived from China with little but the clothes on their backs. But it was also a time of great self-belief – powered by the hard work ethic of thousands of new migrants, and helped by a hands-off colonial government, Hong Kong built itself into a thriving hub of manufacturing, trading and finance. Few miss the deprivations of those years, but many would like to see the return of the tough, can-do spirit that made Hong Kong famous.

Diamond Hill is published by Blacksmith Books. Asia Times Online has a review, as does Time Out Hong Kong.

There were three major “tribes” in Diamond Hill. The biggest was the Cantonese, mainly indigenous Hong Kong people or refugees from Guangdong province. The Chiu Chow refugees were a force to be reckoned with. And the rest were all called Shanghainese. The Cantonese had this habit of calling anyone who spoke any non-Cantonese dialect a Shanghainese.

My father’s ancestors originated from Zhejiang, and he was born and raised in Xian and Wuhan. He spoke Cantonese with a heavy accent, and he was immediately labeled a Shanghainese.

There is safety in numbers. The Cantonese produced the largest number of thugs and triad members. They also looked down on anyone who spoke with an accent.

The Chiu Chow people could hold their own because they had a reputation for being fierce fighters and being loyal to their own people. One of their favorite sayings was gaa gie noun, which means paisan in mafia-speak. When a fight broke out between a Chiu Chow group and another group, you could count on other Chiu Chow people in the area to join in. Chiu Chow people fought among themselves, too; but all would be forgotten when outside people were involved.

The “Shanghainese” were generally meek people. Most of them were not literally Shanghainese anyway, and could have been from any province other than Guangdong. There was no bond among them. Genuine Shanghainese, rightly or wrongly, had a reputation for being wily and having a penchant for pretending to be richer than they really were. They were also formidable businessmen.

My mother was from Chiu Chow, my father was Shanghainese, and I spoke perfect Cantonese. So I’d be whatever worked to my advantage. Among Chiu Chow people, I’d be gaa gie noun, I spoke Mandarin with the Shanghainese, and among Cantonese, no one had to know I wasn’t one of them.

In spite of my father’s worries, I could never become a thug or a triad member, because I was a coward and I was not cruel enough. I did not grow up in a family full of thugs. Also, even at a young age, I believed I would have a future. There was nothing in my formative years that was conducive to a life of crime.

Ah Noun, on the other hand, was spoiled rotten by his mother. The “uncles” who visited him once in a while were macho guys who promised him protection and taught him life lessons not in what not to do, but how not to get caught doing what should not be done. He was hopeless in school, and was a natural-born fighter. When he was seventeen, he fought with another thug in a nearby village over a girl, and got stabbed in the abdomen. After leaving hospital, he had to marry the girl because she was pregnant. He took up a job as a marine policeman later, and told us not to call him Ah Noun but call him Double Eight, his badge number. His mother made his wife wash his feet every day when he came home from work or else she would be beaten. I witnessed the beatings with my own eyes, and they were brutal. What was memorable to me was not only the face of a young woman smeared with blood and tears but also the expression of nonchalance on the face of Ah Noun, as if it was none of his business.

Ah Noun got into trouble when he abandoned mother, wife, and son and everyone else and started going to “dance halls,” where men paid to dance and chat with young women. He borrowed heavily and ran afoul of the law to earn desperate cash. All this happened before he turned twenty. He spent the rest of his life in jail or running.

Ah Noun’s cousin was a thug of a different kind. His nickname was “Bull.” He looked like one and behaved even worse. He was an epileptic, and did not receive the best of medical care. His fits must have deprived him of oxygen to his brain, because he was borderline retarded. His father, who was a well-respected member of the Chiu Chow fraternity, always insisted it was karma and not illness that had caused his son’s problems. You should have seen the father’s face whenever Bull was lying on the ground convulsing. It seemed the father was suffering more pain and despair than the son.
It didn’t help to have a cousin like Ah Noun, who frequently led him astray by getting him in all sorts of trouble. Ah Noun would taunt him into getting into fights with people just for kicks. To get his own kicks, Bull went around sexually assaulting young girls. He approached the victim from the opposite direction and swung his hand towards her crotch and squeezed it so hard the girl screamed and sometimes passed out in pain.
One of the victims was my friend’s sister. The family was so traumatized they didn’t talk to anyone in the neighborhood for years.

Another thug I knew had a worse childhood. Ah Noun and Bull were violent and dumb. This one was violent and psychotic. His nickname was Kwai Tsai (ghost boy) because he had light blond hair, blue eyes, and freckles on his face. He had always been an angry young man, for good reasons. His Chinese mother worked in a Wan Chai bar, and it was common knowledge what she did for a living, and the other kids wouldn’t let him forget it. He was much feared because he used weapons when he fought. He would produce a knife or an axe at the slightest provocation. Policemen were usually called. One time I saw a tall plain-clothed policeman take his axe from him by a kung fu move that would do Bruce Lee proud. I was so impressed that I tried to talk my father into giving me money for kung fu lessons. I did not get it. Whenever I asked for anything, my father would lecture me on the power of the pen. That’s why I am torturing people now not with my kung fu but with my writing.

When I was a teenager, many young men knew some kung fu, or claimed to know it. The most popular style was Wing Chun, which was easy to get into but hard to excel at. Young men learned kung fu for self-defense and to show off, and also as a result of the domino effect. When Umbrella got beaten up by a bigger kid for being cheeky, he immediately enrolled in a Wing Chun class. Within weeks, he wanted us to accompany him to attend an arranged fight between him and some kid he had a grudge with, so that he could show off his kung fu moves. His opponent was a smaller kid, and Umbrella might have won that one marginally. Very soon, we heard that small kid was taking up kung fu as well. His kung fu master was the same one who taught Umbrella, so during the initiation ceremony in which that kid was to kowtow to the master and vow subservience for life, the master told Umbrella and that small kid to make up. They had their arms around each other’s shoulders and swore brotherhood and allegiance to each other’s life and the betterment of the art of kung fu. It was so disgusting to watch I almost threw up.

A younger brother of my sister’s friend, also a La Salle boy, got bullied by some boys from St. George’s College, which was a school for the British Army brats. He picked up Wing Chun, and apparently got to be quite good at it after a couple of years. His mission in life became going over to Kowloon Tong and picking fights with St. George’s boys.
My favorite thug was a guy named Chee Kit who lived not too far from the wet market down Diamond Hill Road. He was a couple of years older than I was, but we were in the same class in school. He was also a Wing Chun wizard. After my dramatic improvement in academic standing in school, I let him copy my homework in exchange for protecting me from other bullies. He was everyone’s friend when some extra muscles were needed. But you had to be very clear about who the target was because he had been known to mess up and beat up the wrong guy. He wasn’t very bright.

Young thugs usually formed a gang and then they became formidable. There were many such loosely formed gangs. Most didn’t do any harm except to protect their turf and honor, or to teach a cheeky outsider a lesson. Unlike young triad gangs nowadays, they were not into any money-making ruses, because there just wasn’t any money around. They were, however, very much about girls. All the loose girls (called teddy girls) in the village were seen hanging out with them. Boys like me could only gawk and salivate.

There were basically two categories of teddy girls. One category was regular girlfriend of a thug, the other was communal property. We had a friend who was too young and too short to be a regular thug but hung around to be their errand boy. He told us he was once rewarded with one of the communal girls, but he refused in a hurry because she happened to be his older sister.

This girl had quite a past. She got knocked up at a very young age. The mother, a hawker in the wet market, when told of the pregnancy, was in for a shock because no one, not even her own daughter, could pinpoint who the father was. The young girl would offer herself for rewards as little as a ticket to a movie or a meal in a tea-house, according to Ah Ho, our maid, who knew the mother well.

The lack of privacy at home was a big problem for dating. If a boy wanted to get to know his girlfriend better, but had no car or money for a love motel, he could only use a dark corner or a deserted spot in public areas.

When I got my driver’s license, the first thing my friends and I did was to borrow a car and drive it after dark to all the popular make-out spots in town, for instance, Kadoorie Avenue or dead-end streets in Ho Man Tin. We drove in without headlights and suddenly turned them on to put the spotlight on men and women in compromising positions. That was good for a cheap thrill.

The Diamond Hill thugs dealt with the privacy problem in their own way. When we were twelve or thirteen, we went gallivanting in a nearby hill and in a clearing among the bushes, the three of us stumbled upon a man and a young lady in a state of undress. Then all of a sudden, three big guys showed up and threatened to do us some harm if we didn’t scram, saying we were disrupting important business their brother was conducting. We scooted away with our tails between our legs. We talked excitedly about the incident for weeks afterwards, and each time the girl was more naked than the last.

When we were a bit older, maybe fourteen or fifteen, we stumbled upon another sex scene, this time in a vacant lot where we played soccer during the day but which became deserted at night because there were no street lights. We were curious to see numerous flashlights flickering on the ground. When we went closer, we found twenty or so “couples,” lying down on newspaper or towels, several feet apart, and engaging in necking and heavy petting. We didn’t have a chance to have a better look, because a sentry was there pronto, and threatened to punch our eyeballs out if we looked that way again.

There were two types of thugs: the teenage bullies who ganged up to terrorize other teenagers, and the grown-up ones who were most likely triad members with prison records. I had only seen teenage thugs fighting in the streets. Adults were seen late at night in the back of a coffee shop whispering to one another. Fights usually involved several young gangsters attacking one victim. Battles between two gangs were rare, indicating that if you belonged to a gang, you didn’t get bullied. The street gangs were very organized when it came to ambushing someone. A few fighters would be dispatched to guard possible escape routes. One would try to immobilize the target by bear-hugging him from behind, followed by the victim being assaulted by a barrage of fists from others. I still remember a thug by the name of Willy, who liked to strike with two fists clenched together. It must have been a pretty clumsy way to fight, but it worked well when your opponent was held down by your collaborators. The thump of fists landing on someone’s body could make your heart race and give you a cold sweat.

A beating was meant to teach a lesson and not to maim. It was meant to send the victim to a bone-setter and not to a surgeon. The Chinese medicine man down the street did a swift business taking care of victims of gang attacks by applying a herbal lotion called “wine for beatings by iron” to the bruises of the battered body.

When young thugs graduated to become full-fledged adult ones, you didn’t see them in the streets in broad daylight anymore. I asked one of my old acquaintances what happened to them. He said: “There is no money in Diamond Hill.” They often migrated to Mong Kok, Yau Ma Tei, and Tsim Sha Tsui where all the money-making actions were.
Umbrella’s neighbor was a Chiu Chow triad member of good standing. He was typical in that he married a plain-looking school teacher, a homebody who bore him children and looked after him without questioning him about his whereabouts or his businesses. He ran an illegal gambling den, and sometimes took Umbrella and me on a tour of all the joints where he had “influence,” including a dance hall in Yau Ma Tei where he talked to the manager in a dialect I couldn’t understand even though it was Cantonese. He collected $10 each from us, and he only used half of the money when it was time to pay and pocketed the rest. Umbrella told me the big man was accustomed to getting discounts wherever he went.

The relationship between policemen and thugs was complicated, especially with Chiu Chow men. It was said the career path of a Chiu Chow boy would be either a gangster or a cop—the former a regular thug, the latter a thug with a gun and a warrant card. A Chiu Chow boy of age could apply to the police academy if he hadn’t had a criminal record and was semi-literate. Failing that, he would join some relatives or childhood friends in what would be called lo pin moon, which could be loosely translated into “working in a semi-legal business.”

I had seen gangsters arrested by policemen and the verbal exchange would be in the Chiu Chow dialect, with the gangsters declaring their affiliations, looking for some kind of connection. Violence broke out often, usually with the gangster punching the cop. I seldom witnessed police brutality in the streets, but I was told if you were in the much feared tsap tsai fong—the room of the plain-clothed Criminal Investigation Division officers, you would be in for an experience you wouldn’t forget.
The beat policemen in our eyes were pretty low human beings. They were, as I alluded to before, thugs with a license. I had seen them walk into Tai Lin’s place, an open house, pick up an apple off the dinner table and walk away. They did their route, stopped by a few illegal spots to collect their daily bribes and did nothing except bully female hawkers. Umbrella’s father knew a few cops, and that was how we learnt of the illegal gambling and opium dens in the neighborhood.

The plain-clothed CID were even worse; their demeanor was indistinguishable from that of triad thugs, with their true identity apparent only when they showed off the gun they carried at the waist.

Many thugs wore hats, the kind you see in Humphrey Bogart movies. We watched a policeman trying to chase down a thug, and dramatically the hat fell off his head, and that stopped the policeman in his tracks, because he had to pick up the hat and look for clues inside. Some older guy told us, in a conspiratorial tone, that there would be a hundred-dollar bill tucked inside.

Not all young thugs grew up to be professional gangsters. A guy by the name of Johnson used to go out with my sister. (As was usually the case, a La Salle boy and a Maryknoll girl). He lived in Kowloon City but came to Diamond Hill often because of my sister. He was a muscular guy and was much feared among the young thugs in Diamond Hill, because he teamed up with another La Salle boy by the name of Michael who lived in Tai Hom Village, and together they had broken a few bones and taught a few lessons to the local teddy boys. Johnson later in life migrated to Canada and became an accountant. And Michael became Mr. Michael Hui Koon Man, the showbiz tycoon, and one of the most successful comic actors and movie producers Hong Kong has seen.

Michael had three younger brothers. The oldest one was Hui Koon Mo, nicknamed “Hero,” who in those days formed his own youth gang terrorizing the neighborhood. He grew up more law-abiding but did no better than being the owner of unsuccessful bars and restaurants. The other two younger brothers were not like Hero; they were more like Michael and went into showbiz. Hui Koon Ying became a comic actor, and the youngest brother is Samuel Hui Koon Kit, the most famous of the lot, who had an illustrious music career and is still lauded by Hong Kong people as the god of Canto-pop.

The Chongqing Guest House, a city landmark, will change its name under a new management agreement, reports the Chongqing Evening News.

The hotel, which adopted its current name in 1956 after serving as a guest house for American soldiers during the anti-Japanese war, signed a deal with deluxe hotel chain Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts yesterday that will make it the first Shangri-La hotel in the city.

However, the loss of the Chongqing Guest House name has upset many city residents, who see the change as yet another example of an international heavyweight obliterating a beloved local brand. Locals are still smarting from Tianfu Cola’s defeat at the hands of Pepsi back in the mid-nineties.

The newspaper presented three objections to the name change, along with rebuttals from the head of the company that owns the hotel:

1. Trashing a good brand

Chongqing Guest House is one of Chongqing’s time-honored brands. Name changes mean that the city’s brands are continuing to decline. The replacement may be a famous global brand, but the inability of local brands to flourish is still a tragedy.

Response: The brand will endure in four areas

Tourism Holdings Group chairman Li Yunguang said that the brand would not die but would continue to be developed in several areas. First, the location of the Shangri-La hotel would still be called CGH-Poly International Plaza, retaining the old name. The Chongqing Guest House Co, Ltd would continue as owner of the Shangri-La, and would continue to manage the CGH Commercial Building to correspond to the new hotel. Star of Chongqing Guest House would continue to operate under its current name as a budget hotel. And the Chongqing Guest House brand of moon cakes, zongzi and New Year’s gift items would not change their name. So the Chongqing Guest House brand would endure in those four areas.

The new Shangri-La

2. Foreign help is not needed

The Chongqing Guest House has been Chongqing’s “Whampoa Academy” for hotel management, and many of the city’s hotel managers got their start there. At the signing ceremony, many veteran CGH staff said that the hotel’s management has always been first-rate. An expert said that because CGH management was practically at the level of an international management company, there was no need to bring in a foreign brand with its foreign name.

Response: The new hotel has an international focus

Li Yunguang said that the choice to partner with Shangri-La was made primarily because of its brand recognition and management experience. Although Chongqing Guest House is an established brand, its influence is limited to Chongqing, or at most the rest of the country. Shangri-La is an internationally-famous deluxe hotel brand whose influence is global. Chongqing has been receiving an increasing number of guests from outside regions and foreign countries since it became a directly-controlled municipality, and it needs internationalized brands. It will be able to attract guests from throughout the world through Shangri-La’s global marketing network. In addition, Li believes that even in hotel management, Shangri-La is superior. In hotel design, for example, a meeting room’s layout should allow guests easy entry without crowding. Rooms have their own requirements: if a guest orders room service, it ought to arrive within a few minutes. CGH’s partnership is, to some extent, a self-improvement effort.

There’s one additional objection: that a foreign interloper will find it difficult to do business with a local company, but both the question and answer seem a little perfunctory.

As for the name issue, the article proposes a solution: rather than simply replacing the old name, why not combine the two, and call the new hotel Chongqing Guest House: Shangri-La?

This is not a good week for domestic milk powder. In the latest round of a melamine contamination scandal that everyone thought was put to rest more than a year ago, Chinese media reported today that three people have been arrested in Shanxi for selling melamine-tainted milk. This follows reports last December of a company that repackaged and sold milk powder that was supposed to have been destroyed in 2008.

And the English-language edition of the Global Times reported today that demand for foreign milk powder is picking up.

A Xinhua investigation printed in today’s Metro Express and other newspapers across the country is hard not to connect to the current scandal. Two Xinhua reporters spoke with the former employee of an infant formula manufacturer who said that the company enticed doctors and other medical staff to promote its products in their hospitals.

The source used in the article provided inside information that echoes the account told to a Mirror journalist in August 2008, just before the first melamine scandal broke. That article’s focus was on how the privacy of new mothers was violated by hospitals that sold their personal information to formula producers; the Xinhua journalists chose to emphasize the role unscrupulous doctors have in pressuring new mothers to use formula instead of breast feeding their babies.

Although melamine is not mentioned by name, the final paragraphs of the article allude to vague “quality problems” that could come back to haunt doctors who promoting a particular brand of formula for no special medical reason.

“Whenever they provide a new mother’s personal information, they will receive a 10- to 30-yuan ‘handling fee’. If they successfully promote the company’s products, they will receive a 60-yuan ‘continuation fee’.”

For medical personnel, instructing new mothers in breast feeding is a duty, yet in the interest of profit, some of them have abandoned that duty and have become “spokespersons” for infant formula. What is behind this relationship between formula producers and “angels in white”? Our reporters recently conducted an investigation to find out.

A hidden “profit chain”

“Companies give doctors money, take them to dinner, and give them gifts. Some doctors are tempted, and providing a list of expecting mothers is not difficult.” The former “medical administrator” of a domestic milk powder producer recently made a report claiming that beginning two years ago, the company had selected the city of Taiyuan to launch a trial program to obtain the personal information of maternity patients by offering rebates. After distributing literature and promotional material for the company’s products, the company could realize substantial returns. The “medical administrator” claimed that she had been in charge of more than twenty “medical agents” who were responsible for cultivating relationships with doctors. The company would even devote a budget to “key” doctors in order to maintain its old client list and add new ones.

The company reportedly had a full set of regulations that prescribed detailed rules for “medical communications”: the company’s goal was to “fill all available space.” It fought to established a “friendly” relationship with the medical staff in the departments of prenatal, ultrasound, maternity, pediatric, and preventative medicine at hospitals at all levels, using them to market milk powder to maternity patients. Products were held on consignment in those wards and sold “at a discount,” or samples were distributed by hospital staff for free to new mothers. Doctors who handed out the formula samples or discount cards were required to say things like, “Mothers and children are all drinking XXX milk these days. Children who drink this brand grow up cute and clever.” Companies held their own “parenting salons” and asked their “medical agents” to “choose the most well-known pediatricians in the area, or well-known specialists from partner hospitals” and, one week before the event, “talk over content with the lecturers to make sure that it was in line with the products.” This served to “increase the follow-up consumption rate.”

Company training session materials provided by the “medical administrator” showed that discount cards, nutrition books, and parenting handbooks were classified as company promotional materials and were to be distributed to new mothers by hospital staff; a note read, “beneficial for improving doctor recommendation of milk powder.” “Before I resigned, the company I worked for had established partnerships with nearly 400 medical and health care organizations in Shanxi, and its particular brand of milk powder had achieved a continued purchase rate of more than 30%. Some hospitals even made it the only brand they admitted. The immediate profitability of this method led the company to expand the practice to eighteen provinces.”

“An infant’s first mouthful of milk is taken at the hospital, so a massive market share can be won by occupying medical channels,” the informant said. Even if a mother nurses her baby, she should add supplements at four months and wean the child after roughly one year. The company can influence the parents through medical channels, guiding more of them to choose its products for supplements and post-weaning food. “The commission paid out to doctors is passed on invisibly to the consumer.” The informant said that because medical channel expenditures were so high, the price of formula would continue to rise the company sought to stabilize profits. Price adjustments in recent years were due in part to this reason.

The true meaning of “300 grams”

An industry insider revealed that for the majority of newborns, once they become accustomed to a particular brand of formula it is difficult for them to adjust to any changes. In addition, once they feel that it is easier to drink formula, they will refuse to nurse. Some formula companies will therefore distribute free samples of their product, amounting to 300 grams — typically what a newborn will consume in a week — to cement the infant’s preference and rule out as options both mother’s milk and other formula brands.

This reporter recently visited a number of hospitals and pediatric preventive medicine facilities to explore the situation described by the source. The result was a shock: the informant’s company was not the only formula producer traveling this road. And it was not only formula: some medical staff also actively promoting a wide range of children’s health products.

At a childbirth class run by a “baby friendly hospital” (a UNICEF designation), an eloquent doctor was giving a free session for a dozen or so expecting mothers, explaining all kinds of childbirth and parenting-related questions. As he was speaking about infant food and nutrition, the doctor emphasized the unique properties of a particular brand of formula. After the session, every mother was given a free bag of that brand of formula. On another occasion, the reporter accompanied a parent to a Class III-A hospital on East Shuangta Street in Taiyuan for a pediatric checkup. An older doctor on duty asked whether the parent was nursing or using formula. Learning that the child was given formula, the doctor became interested immediately: “What brand are you using?” But when the parent responded, “I don’t want to switch brands,” the doctor stopped speaking and bent down to write out a prescription, and then pointed to the pharmacy opposite: “Give your child a calcium gluconate supplement. Go to that pharmacy and pick up this brand, and then come back and I’ll tell you how it should be taken.”

“Even though there are posters in every room in the hospital promoting breast feeding, not a single member of the medical staff gave me any instruction in nursing during the seven days after I gave birth,” said Ms. Qin, who had become a mother just three months before. She had continued nursing for just a few days before switching to formula. Afterward, she received follow-up calls from a formula brand, always asking how she came to learn of “our” formula, and offering her two choices: was it on the recommendation of a friend, or of a doctor? This reporter learned that most women do not immediately start producing milk after giving birth, and they need an infant’s suckling to stimulate their milk secretions. Some formula producers take advantage of the time when new mothers are in the hospital after giving birth but before they learned how to properly nurse to have medical personnel provide them with free samples, which are then fed to the newborn under the “supervision” of those same medical personnel.

Fines cannot be the only punishment

Laws already exist barring the barring sellers and producers of breast milk substitutes from using hospitals and other health care facilities to distribute free samples of their products, so why have they continued to do so? Interviewees said that medical personnel acting as “spokespersons” is not merely a question of profit; it is an issue of responsibility that must be investigated and exposed to the rest of society. The [Implementation Measures] for the Law on Maternal and Infant Health Care says that medical and health care institutions shall not promote or recommend breast milk substitutes to expecting mothers or the families of infants; producers and marketers of breast milk substitutes may not provide samples to medical and health care institutions or offer them equipment, funding, or informational materials conditional on such promotion.

“Hospitals do not have the responsibility to hand out formula, and besides, the country does not permit medical personnel to give out formula. Doctors can only make a medical diagnosis as to whether a newborn requires artificial feeding, but giving parents formula is definitely not a medical necessity,” said Guo Zhanying, director of the Department of Maternal, Child, and Community Health Office at the Shanxi Provincial Department of Health. “We found in our investigations that some medical personnel have indeed violated the law and ethical principles and have to some degree been engaging in marketing for the manufacturers.”

Experts say that medical personnel are not quality inspectors, so if quality problems crop up in a particular batch of milk, they cannot evade responsibility. As for the existence of medical personnel acting as “spokespersons” for formula, the public health administrators should toughen up examinations and management. Fines should not be the only means of punishment; there ought to be stronger ethical and legal constraints as well.

On Monday an incident occurred in Tianjin where 10 people were killed by an employee of a government affiliated utilities company. Zhang Yimin (张义民) drove a bus to hit bystanders and police in Tianjin’s CBD district. See Danwei’s front page for the whole story.

Since then rumors have been flying about the cause of the incident, including the suspect’s brother alleging that Zhang Yimin, the suspect, reported that his wife and daughter had been kidnapped to the bathing center opposite his residential complex. Today, The Beijing News follows up with interviews with neighbors and a call-in reader who wanted to verify some details in their earlier report.

Yesterday, no-one answered at the home of the Tianjin malicious car incident’s Zhang Yimin. His neighbor said that after the incident Zhang Yimin’s home has been empty. The local government certified yesterday evening that the numbers of the dead is now 10 people.

The night before the incident a noisy man visited
Zhang Yimin’s home is in the Binhai new area (滨海新区)， Hangzhou road, Huiyangli and inside a certain residential complex. The apartment is on the 3rd floor and the space is less than 50sqm, with two bedrooms, the living room is a narrow corridor. Left and right of the apartment’s door, there are numerous advertisement stickers on the walls.

Four people stay here permanently: himself, his wife, his mother and his daughter. His neighbors’ impressions of him: 1.80 meters tall, handsome-looking, introverted, not prone to speaking, seems kindly and when he sees someone he knows, he’s first in saying hello.

A neighbor who lived in the same unit said that the night before the incident a man who was around 1.65 meters tall swearing and talking loudly on his phone came upon Zhang’s door and used him hand to loudly pound on the anti-theft door. When Zhang opened his door he asked his guest to “come in and speak,” afterward both doors smashed shut.　

The day before yesterday, Zhang Yimin’s fourth brother Zhang Yiyuan (张义元) told this reporter that his little brother called him the night before the incident saying that his wife and daughter had been kidnapped to the bathing center opposite the residential complex, and wanted him to accompany him to report it to the police.

At present, it is not known whether the man who visited was Zhang Yiyuan. The bathing center close-by also denied the kidnapping incident.

The relevant authorities has certified that there are 10 dead
Last night, Tianjin’s relevant authorities released information on enorth.com.cn to say that one heavily injured person died after failed resuscitation. But the local Public Security bureau and local Publicity Department did not reply concerning whether police’s action during the incident could have been the cause.

The reporter asked the Hangzhou Road police station where Zhang Yimin’s home is, whether Zhang Yimin reported to the police that his wife and daughter had been kidnapped just before the incident happened, the police representative said, “Without the permission from above, we can’t accept any interviews.”
　
A migrant worker from Hebei, He Xiangling (何香玲) died in the incident, her son Liu Changsheng (刘长生) did not answer his phone. After the inciden someone had been accompanying Liu, and at one point had taken his phone from him to speak to this reporter directly.

Liu Jianxin’s (刘建新) brother revealed that his brother was recovering well, and at present was able to converse clearly, “Leaders have not spoken to us about medical bills and compensation yet.”
　
Leaving a question open　
“The report about the local situation had some incorrections”
Some in-the-know person thinks that the brand of the car that was reported was wrong, as well as where the suspect stabbed his colleague.

Yesterday morning, someone who said they had knowledge about the affair called this newspaper to say that the bulletin that was published locally had many wrong facts.

1. The brand of the bus that caused trouble in the reported was wrong
According to this person, Zhang Yimin drove an Irizar (伊利萨尔) rather than what the report said: a Huanghe bus. According to his information, T&B utilities company had many Irizars, and its external appearance and bus label is the same as the photo from the scene of the incident.
　
2. The place of incident in the report is wrong
According to this person, the local government’s bulletin also got the place wrong, “It wasn’t in the company that he stabbed someone,” they said, it actually happened “near the front door of the Toyota company,” at the time the transfers of two Irizars at the T&B company had just been completed.

According to him, Zhang Yimin and Li Tao (李涛) was on one of the buses with a Toyota employee, Zhang Yimin and Li Tao were having a conversation as always, “They weren’t in an argument, then suddenly without realizing why, Zhang took out a knife and pointed it towards Li. After Li was stabbed he got off the bus and sprinted away, Zhang ran after him with the knife but was stopped by the Toyota employee, who held onto his waist from behind. At this time the driver of the Irizar behind saw what was happening, stopped the bus and got off. Then Zhang stabbed at his own neck with the blade, but it wasn’t life-threatening, so he ran towards the other vehicle, then the 2.1 incident happened.
　
“Hitting people was not forced by the police.” He said, the local relevant authorities reported what happened that Zhang drove the bus out of the T&B area to the CBD aroused suspicions about how police were treating it, but this is not in line with what actually happened.

This person, who doesn’t want to give his real identity, said Zhang Yimin and Li Tao had a good relationship: Li Tao had helped Zhang Yimin into T&B utilities company.

The Toyota company has many companies and factories in Tianjin’s CBD district. Yesterday afternoon this reporter was at the second, fifth, seventh and other locations asking questions but all the security guards didn’t know anything about it.

Paying a visit
Neighbors say that Zhang Yimin is normally very kind

According to the neighbors, Zhang Yimin’s family normally seemed very good-natured. Recently during heavy snowfall in Tianjin, Zhang’s mother voluntarily gathered and swept up the snow.

Although Zhang’s house is spare, the environment around his house is good. Zhang’s wife frequently goes down to the shop to buy beer, each time it’s 3 bottles; Zhang Yimin rarely goes.

The residential complex has walls that are not very soundproof, and the neighbors has never heard Zhang Yimin get into a fight with his wife. Therefore of the couple’s relationship, it’s “hard to say.”
　
Downstairs the local barbers say that every month Zhang Yimin gets his hair cut, each time it’s 6 yuan, his only wish is, “Not too short, but do what you think.” When they have a conversation it’s about the stock market.

Zhang’s wife is apparently from Zhangjiakou (张家口) in Hebei province. Every 6 months she would go to the barber’s and get her hair straightened, each time for 50 yuan. Zhang’s daughter is just over 10 years-old.

A local said that after the incident the police went to investigate in Zhangjiakou. As for Zhang Yimin’s brother’s words about the kidnapping of his wife and daughter, the neighbors professed ignorance. 　

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How does a stodgy party organ compete against commercial newspapers that cater to readers’ desire for scandal and gossip?

The Guangzhou Daily has adopted the strategy of hiding its boring front page, which follows the boring propaganda-first model hewed to by party dailies across the country, inside a flashy wrapper, making it look like an ordinary commercial tabloid.

Here are the stories featured on the wrapper:

• “Third session of the Eleventh Provincial People’s Congress closes”;
• “Zhu Xiaodan: Housing prices should not make sharp or sudden movements”;
• “Wen Qiang in court; husband and wife accuse each other”: further developments in the Chongqing anti-corruption campaign as former police chief appears in court;
• “Li Zhuang confesses”: Lawyer for Chongqing mob boss admits he fabricated evidence;
• “Nina Wang’s ‘feng-shui master’ loses lawsuit over estate”: latest developments in the wrangling over the Hong Kong tycoon’s fortune;
• “Guangdong to eliminate or consolidate 25 expressway tollbooth plazas within the year”;
• “Guangzhou man takes out advert in this paper to distribute money to poor areas”;
• “Tianhe flower market restricts traffic for the first time this year”;
• “Passenger falls to death when bus fails to close door”;
• “Low-cost housing property rights: held jointly by government and occupant to prevent fraud and speculation”;
• “An extra month’s wait for housing loans from banks”;
• “Berlusconi wants a divorce”;
• “Iraqi bomber kills herself and forty-one others”;
• “Spring festival gala program listing”;
• “Coca-Cola responds to ‘mercury-poisoned Sprite’”;
• “Strong words from Wei Di”: the new Chinese Football Association chief vows to clean up corruption;
• “Official ‘dies in the line of duty’ while attending hospitality function”: Huang He, director of the Wenzhou Development and Reform Commission, died after a banquet on January 30;

Here are the headlines from the actual front page:

• “Third session of the Eleventh Provincial People’s Congress closes”;
• “Construction of affordable housing should accelerate this year”;
• “SMS service suspended for 900,000 mobile phone numbers in Guangdong”;
• “‘Four soldiers’ installed at Military Museum”: a sculpture based on a photograph taken by a Guangzhou Daily journalist of soldiers assisting in the 2008 snowstorm relief effort;
• “First estimates of the year: Yuexiu District at the top again”;
• “Zhu Xiaodan: Housing prices should not make sharp or sudden movements”;
• “Improve outward promotion for the Asian Games to boost the international image of Guangzhou”;
• “Migrant workers with work injuries can get a pension of 2,357 yuan per month”.
• “I hope the Dalai Lama will make the correct choice within his lifetime” (in the top right corner)

A clash over the forced seizure of farmland on January 7 that resulted in the death of one farmer brought renewed attention to the problem of illegal land requisition in rural China.

The incident took place in Hewan, a village in the county-level city of Pizhou, under the administrative jurisdiction of Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province. During the second half of January, The Beijing News reporter Tu Chonghang conducted an extensive investigation into land requisitions in Pizhou.

The report illustrates how the city’s impressive economic performance is based on the practice of seizing land from local farmers for minimal compensation and then selling it off to speculators who expect land prices to continue to rise. As the city’s land area increased, its government moved into fancy offices ten times larger than what had been approved.

Authorities in Pizhou knew that their actions violated the law: officials submitted bogus applications to avoid mandatory approval procedures, flooded farmland to rezone it as waste land, and even had villagers camouflage construction sites so they would not show up on satellite images. Officials from the Ministry of Land and Resources who arrived to conduct spot-checks would find villagers masquerading as factory workers to hid the fact that industrial parks were lying unused even as more were being built.

The newspaper’s report assigns some of the blame to the “iron-fisted policies” of Pizhou party secretary Li Lianyu. Li, who gained national recognition in 2007 for a lavish celebration staged to welcome him home from the 17th Party Congress, carried out an ambitious five-year-plan to develop Pizhou through rapid land requisitions and immense construction projects. His style of tough micro-management drove lower-level officials to meet targets by any means possible. In some cases that included the seizure of land by force.

In the village of Penghu, in the western suburbs of Pizhou, a city in Northern Jiangsu Province, a construction site lies dormant, its buildings half complete and covered with black camouflage netting.

On January 15, several villagers explained the reason for the camouflage: the Ministry of Land and Resources had recently been investigating land use in Pizhou, so the village committee had found the netting to obscure the buildings and had laid straw and corn stalks over the cement roads to fool remote sensing satellites.

Last October, a 150-point spot check the Ministry of Land and Resources had performed in Pizhou resulted in a passing rate of 98%: painless approval.

Two months later, on January 7, a forced eviction in the village of Hewan in the town of Heyun ended up with a 22-year-old villager stabbed to death while protecting his land.

An investigation revealed that this illegal land seizure was no isolated occurrence in Pizhou. As illegal seizures were going on, the city of Pizhou had expanded 50 square kilometers in the space of five years. Last year, Pizhou leapt into the top hundred counties in China, and its “wealth through land sales”-model of city management became known as the “Pizhou phenomenon.”

Drowning threats and violent land requisitions
Villager Wang Sumei said that her husband had been dragged to the lakeside and ordered to sign under threat of drowning

On January 7, Sun Xiaojun, Hewan village secretary, allegedly organized more than 200 people to seize land by force, and Li Dongdong, a 22-year-old villager, was killed while protecting his land.

The episode attracted the attention of the central authorities and the provincial leadership, and more than seventy people have been implicated in the case.

An investigation conducted by this reporter in January showed that forced demolition and land seizure was normal practice in the area.

On January 15, the former village head of Batou in the town of Yunhe, said that after their village was brought within the limits of Pizhou’s New District last October, they received a deadline for demolition and removal.

Many villagers said that the town government had divided up households among its officials, who then proceeded to “flatten” the town by cutting off electricity, administering physical and verbal abuse, and dragging people away by force.

Wang Sumei’s husband Tan Yunju was beaten last October 12 after he refused to sign. On January 18, Wang provided a video that showed more than ten men kicking Tan and his daughter in a room, and then dragging Tan outside where they beat him into unconsciousness.

Wang said that while her husband was in the hospital, some people came and dragged him to the lakeside where they ordered him to sign on the spot or be drowned in the lake. Tan signed his name.

More than ten villagers in Batou alone said in interviews with this reporter that they had also ended up in the hospital.

Many people in the village of Penghu, in the town of Zhaodun in western Pizhou, mentioned that in July 2007, the wife of villager Wang was beaten to death while obstructing the seizure of their land. The town gave more than 600,000 in compensation. Wang has since moved elsewhere.

On January 15, the eastern side of the village of Wuchang, Yunhe, was a broad expanse of water, with wheat shoots clearly visible through the ice. To the south of the farmland, the Thousand Island Lake Park was under construction. Villagers said that at the end of November, the town government gave instructions for more than 10,000 mu (670 hectares) to be flooded. The subdistrict office in Xutang verified that the farmland had previously been unpolluted rice fields.

The villagers suggested that the flooding was done for a construction project: the land could be claimed to be wasteland flooded by low-lying water. They also said it was done to dispel any hope the villagers might have for the land requisition process.

Last year, villagers in Bachang, which lies near Shagou Lake, complained to the Xuzhou Land and Resources Bureau that the government had begun to dig a lake that occupied more than 1,300 mu (87 hectares) of good farmland. The Xuzhou bureau instructed Pizhou to investigate. The feedback from the Pizhou Bureau of Land and Resources claimed that the use of more than 80 mu (5.3 hectares) was in violation of the law and that it had filed a case for investigation. However, it gave no explanation for the more than 1,000 mu that remained.

On January 15, cranes and earth-moving equipment were still at work digging a lake on the land the villagers reported.

A village removed, as villagers “go upstairs”
Villagers who moved into the apartments believed that they had become “unclassifiable”: compensation was impractical, and farmers said that they felt uneasy without land

As Pizhou’s New District was developed, many villages lost their land, and a few were moved in their entirety.

In Hewan, before the killing, more than 2,500 mu of farmland had been taken over, out of a total of over 3,000 mu. The village of Likou, also in Yunhe, saw all of its arable land confiscated by 2007.

According to people in towns like Yunhe and Chenlou, the towns had rented the farmland to the industrial districts that now occupied it, rather than legally requisitioning the land. The price generally ranged from 600 to 1,000 yuan per mu.

The government built “farmers’ apartments” for the farmers who had lost their land and their villages.

The entire village of Batou was moved, with compensation ranging between 500 and 800 yuan per mu. The villagers could purchase space in farmers’ apartments – roughly 30 square meters per person for a price of 1,300 yuan per square meter. They said that even added together, the compensation they had received was insufficient.

Xu Chuanling, a thirty-five-year-old woman from Batou, committed suicide last October. On January 20, Xu’s mother-in-law said that they received a total of 307,000 yuan in compensation for the 262 square meters in two separate residences the eleven people in their family used to live in, but when they could not afford new apartments after the old homes were torn down, Xu killed herself.

On January 29, Xu’s father-in-law Wang Ziyuan said that after she died, the village gave them two 100-square-meter residences free of charge, saying it was for the children’s education. However, the village made them stay in a hotel for ten days, during which time it would not let them contact the outside.

On January 13, the “Zhangcun Hewan Farmers’ Apartments” were completed in north Hewan. More than thirty seven-storey buildings were clustered together, separated from each other by less than ten meters.

The villagers said that around half a year ago, the town government had divvied up the village households among local officials so as to move everyone in Zhangcun and Hewan into the apartments. In east Batou, a few dozen apartment buildings had been finished and were now home to many villagers.

Villagers from Batou said that they had not adapted. Used to raising pigs and chickens, they did not feel right living in an apartment building.

Some of the younger, stronger villagers left to find work elsewhere, and those who did not leave simply sat at home, worrying. On January 13, Xue Yinli of Hewan said that a farmer’s life is tilling the land, so without land, they feel uneasy.

Strategies for policy evasion
The Land Management official said that the government is constantly changing land classification, from basic farmland to arable land, and then to wasteland

After the killing in Hewan, the Nanjing supervisory office of the Ministry of Land and Resources visited Pizhou a second time to investigate illegal land seizures.

On January 15, an employee of the Pizhou office confessed that as member of the Bureau of Land and Resources, he was afraid the entire time that any mistakes would result in an arrest.

Last October, Pizhou was criticized by the Nanjing supervisory office for failing in its duty to control illegal land seizure. Pizhou had been named second on a list of eight illegal land seizure cases that the Ministry of Land and Resources submitted in 2007.

It was then that the Jiangsu Provincial Bureau of Land and Resources designated illegal land seizures in Pizhou as “serious.”

However, Pizhou’s illegal seizure of land did not stop.

“We were under pressure from the leadership to meet land requisition targets, and if we didn’t, we couldn’t hold on to our positions,” said one employee of the Pizhou Bureau of Land and Resources, who also said that in recent years, the Bureau had tried to meet targets any way that it could.

According to the Land Administration Law [Article 45], requisition of basic farmland, other cultivated land exceeding 35 hectares, and other land exceeding 70 hectares is subject to approval by the State Council, and requisition of other land is subject to approval by the governments of provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities, with reports made to the State Council.

On January 20, the employee claimed that over the past few years, no construction land in Pizhou had been reported to the State Council.

Bureau documents from years past show only a few applications for more than 30 hectares; the remaining land use applications were for a just a few hectares to less than twenty. In 2007 and 2008, no approved construction land exceeded 50 hectares.

However, according to Xuzhou’s Master Plan for Land Use, the amount of arable land to be given for construction use in Pizhou between 1997 and 2010 was 27,600 mu (1,840 hectares). Subtracting 15,600 mu for major national water conservancy projects leaves just 12,000 mu for city development.

Yet nearly 30 square kilometers (3,000 hectares), most of which was farmland, had been added to the framework of Pizhou’s New District.

On January 15, a source within the Pizhou Bureau of Land and Resources revealed that because the state kept a tight rein on arable land, the municipal government would alter its master plan every few years, constantly adjusting the location of protected basic farmland areas and general arable land. For example, basic farmland would be reclassified as arable land, and arable land would be reclassified as wasteland.

According to national principles for equitable compensation, land requisitions required an equal amount of the same quality of land to be offered in return. In Pizhou, this meant “developing” new farmland on hilltops, slopes, gullies, and waterlines in its northern mountain region and designating it for agricultural use.

The Bureau source disclosed that when the Ministry of Land and Resources conducted its inspection last November, Pizhou put up walls around basic farmland in the towns of Paoche and Yunhe and dumped construction waste inside to make the land appear as it it were already in use and to set the stage for actual use of the land in the future.

Locals said that in November, the city paid villagers 50 yuan per day to construction sites near the Thousand Island Lake with straw and corn stalks to fool the Ministry’s remote sensing satellites. Work on the sites resumed once the inspection had concluded.

On January 24, a villager in Batou said that after the death in Hewan on January 7, the Yunhe government hired villagers to put the straw back out again.

The investigation revealed that straw, corn stalks, and even camouflage netting were also used to evade detection in other villages and towns.

On January 13, a villager in Penghu said that last November, villages in the area extending southward from Zhaodun to Yitang hired villagers to spread straw and cornstalks onto cement roadways and to cover construction sites with black netting.

A faux-Zhongnanhai administrative center
Chang’an Road out in front. Thousand Island Lake off to one side. A small group of classical buildings lies inside the campus. The center exceeded its approved area by a factor of ten

At the same time Pizhou was requisitioning land, many landmark buildings took shape in the city. The Pizhou Administrative Center, which occupies more than 600 mu, is known as “Pizhou’s Zhongnanhai.”

The Administrative Center went into use in February 2008, but only one sign currently graces its main gate: “Pizhou Visitor Reception Center.” Large characters in the center that read “Serve The People” form a reminder that this is the seat of government.

Twenty-two buildings and halls of various sizes are inside the compound. These include a cafeteria, a reception center, and leaders’ apartments, all of which are done in traditional Chinese architectural styles.

The city party committee and municipal government are joined by individual buildings devoted to government agencies like the Construction Bureau and the Finance Bureau.

An inside source said that signs for the city government and its departments were hung inside the compound so as not to appear too eye-catching.

The Administrative Center’s matching residential area occupies 700 mu and contains schools and service facilities.

The Thousand Island Lake project in back of the Pizhou Administrative Center is the largest wetland park in Pizhou. To the west of the center is the Shagou Lake Model Agricultural Park. The source said that the entire Shagou Lake district would be constructed in imitation of Beijing’s Beihai and Nanhai.

In front of the Administrative Center is a six-lane road (plus two emergency lanes) that has the name “Chang’an Road.”

Because of the scene described above, the Pizhou Administrative Center is known among locals as “Pizhou’s Zhongnanhai.”

The Administrative Center was reportedly built at a cost of 150 million yuan by the Jiangsu Golden Bridge Group, which then gave it to the Pizhou government for its own use. In return, the Pizhou government gave the company more than 300 mu in the old city for free.

The application reveals that the center exceeded its approved area by a factor of ten. According to land use estimates in Xuzhou’s 2006 construction plan, Pizhou’s administrative service center project was to occupy 4 hectares (60 mu), contain 28,000 square meters of floor space, and cost 68 million yuan.

On January 21, a Pizhou Bureau of Land and Resources official who requested anonymity said that the Administrative Center was first approved as a party committee and municipal government project, but subsequent approvals were illicitly obtained under the names of other entities. In addition, occupied land frequently exceeded what had been approved.

On November 22, 2007, three months before the Administrative Center was completed, the city of Xuzhou issued a document barring party and government agencies from occupying farmland or moving into landmark buildings.

The land occupied by the center had previously been part of Shagou’s contract responsibility farmland. The “Shagou Lake Model Agriculture Park” now occupies more than 4,000 mu. An inside source revealed that prior to 2007, the park had been named “Shagou Lake Water Park,” but after being criticized by name in the 2007 report issued by the Ministry of Land and Resources, it had changed to its present name (and is classified as “basic farmland”).

However, while the gardens contain artificial landscapes and entertainment facilities, there is no farming equipment to be found.

The three gates to the “model agriculture park” reportedly cost of 15 million yuan, and the 69-meter-tall Longxin Pavilion inside the park is yet another emblem of Pizhou.

According to the website of the Pizhou government, Li Lianyu visited the gardens last April 23 to decide upon locations for the entertainment facilities. Commercial investment paid for the construction of the facilities, which included airplane and swing rides.

Land brings wealth in the construction of a city
Build basic installations to create prime locations and increase land values, and then sell them off. Land prices in Pizhou reportedly doubled in three years

Pizhou’s New District, currently under construction, is about fifteen kilometers from the old city center.

Pizhou party secretary Li Lianyu reportedly asked that the New District have a single, unified image and that its buildings make their mark in the city.

A 10,000-seat stadium, a city plan exhibition hall, and the new Pizhou Middle School took shape in the area surrounding the Administrative Center. Opposite the center in the Aishan Scenic Area is the “Avenue of Good Fortune.”

Stone carvings reading “top-ranked in the nation” and “champion at all levels” line the road, which extends for 958 meters, bordered by 9,999 floral wreaths and decorated with lotus and ruyi insignias. Pizhou calls this the longest white marble avenue in the world. Locals call it the “lotus jade avenue.”*

The avenue is called one of Pizhou’s top ten pieces of architecture. It was built at a cost of 70 million yuan.

Other projects in the top ten include the 30-million-yuan Mt. Jiulong Hotel (known among locals as the “Aishan Summer Palace”), and the 40-million-yuan Jiulong Fountain, which they say is the tallest fountain in the world.*

When Li Lianyu told the media in 2006 about his goals for city construction, he said that a major component was managing the city by generating wealth through land.

The city government monopolized the first-class land market and took a market-oriented approach to the use of land for construction by putting basic installations into the surrounding area to create a prime location that elevated the price of land. Then it was put up for sale.

Eight schools and other buildings are currently under construction in the New District. Pizhou’s government website claims that this is an important step for spurring popular acceptance and development in the New District.

In response to the massive amount of construction, both housing and land prices in Pizhou have doubled in the last three years. A Zhejiang businessman said that one mu of land that used to cost 400,000 yuan now goes for more than a million.

At an auction run by the Pizhou Bureau of Land and Resources in the first half of 2006, 500 mu of land in Batou was snatched up by the Fuguiniao Group, and 300 mu in east Liubaohe and 600 mu of farmland in Likou were sold for 370,000 yuan per mu.

Today, these plots all have residential neighborhoods built on them that sell for an average of 2,800 yuan per square meter. For housing in good locations, this can rise to more than 4,000 yuan.

By 2006, Pizhou had sold off 36 tracts that brought in a total of 462 million yuan in revenue. According to publicly-available data, Pizhou took in more than 600 million yuan in land sales in 2006, and in 2007 it broke 800 million.

Data from 2005 shows that city construction contributed as much as 14.4% to Pizhou’s GDP growth.

Iron-fisted policies drive expansion
Those who didn’t perform were replaced, so officials rotated in every six months. The party secretary’s iron fist was infamous in the region

The news media reported that Pizhou’s economic growth had led northern Jiangsu for several years in a row. Last July, the term “Pizhou speed” was created after Pizhou was listed for the first time as one of the country’s top 100 counties (and county-level cities).

The man behind “Pizhou speed” was the “iron-fisted party secretary,” Li Lianyu. Named mayor of Pizhou in 2001, he became party secretary the following year and has remained in that position to this day.

In 2001, Pizhou’s urban district covered an area of 19 square kilometers. That year, Li proposed a goal of “building another Pizhou in five years.”

Pizhou recruited experts from Tsinghua University, Southeast University, and abroad to design plans for the New District.

For its city management, Pizhou then turned to generating wealth through land. Propaganda slogans like “Productivity through city construction” and “City construction is economic construction” can still be found across the city.

Within five years, more than 500 major projects had been launched in Pizhou, and a number of new development districts were in the works. Beginning in 2001, when Pizhou broke ground on an economic development area, the following five years saw a main industrial park take shape in the northern subdistrict of Xutang, and subsidiary zones created in seven towns.

“An industrial park in every town.” On January 18, a source within the Pizhou municipal government said that towns and villages adopted the urban center’s model of building new districts, economic development districts, and industrial parks.

By 2007, Li Lianyu declared that the goal to “build another Pizhou in five years” had been attained. The city had been enlarged to cover an area of 50 square kilometers.

Local officials believe that the pace of construction was closely tied to Li’s iron-fisted policies.

In the world of Pizhou politics, Li was known for requiring sixteen-hour days from government staffers, or they would be free to find work elsewhere. If the work he assigned was not completed, he would immediately find replacements.

On one occasion, a hospital director was asked why the start of a particular project had been delayed. He answered that he did not have the money. Li Lianyu said, “If you don’t have the money, then leave, and I’ll find someone who can get the money.”

It is said that officials in Pizhou were replaced practically every six months.

On January 13, an employee of the city party committee said that the standing committee would hold meetings every week, during which Li Lianyu would issue detailed work instructions to the party, government, people’s congress, and political consultative conference leaders, as well as the heads of government agencies. This was known as “following through with one voice.”

Local officials said that Li’s administrative style had an effect on village and town leaders as well. Lou Congrui, former party secretary of the town of Yunhe, was called “a second Li Lianyu.”

In 2007, Li Peizeng, branch secretary of the village of Hewan, was relieved of his position by Lou for “lax land requisition” and replaced with Sun Xiaojun. This year on January 7, Sun allegedly organized a mob to seize land by force, resulting in one death. After the incident, Lou was dismissed.

Pizhou’s expansion campaign is still going on.

“Commercial” lust for growth continues to expand the city
One industrial park had only been open for three months when the government hired farmers to act as workmen to meet an inspection team, to the amusement of locals

Pizhou continued to expand.

After growing to 50 square kilometers in 2007, Li Lianyu said that the next step would be to extend the city framework another 98 square kilometers. A government document showed that the city’s master plan called for a total area of 331 square kilometers.

A senior Pizhou official said that at the start of every year, the city government would establish ten or more “investment bureaus” that would travel the country seeking investors. But their catch was slim and limited mostly to chemical and refining industries.

On January 15, fewer than ten percent of the rows upon rows of factories in Gonghu, Paoche, and Yunhe industrial parks that stretched for nearly forty kilometers along the Xuzhou-Lianyungang highway were actually in operation.

At most of the sites, gateless walls surrounded factory compounds overgrown with weeds. Some did contain actual buildings, but these were empty of equipment. Villagers tended animals and grew vegetables in some of the empty buildings.

According to a report in the August 13, 2006 edition of the Xuzhou Daily, the Golden Phoenix Furniture Industrial Park covers 1,100 mu (73 hectares) and was built at a cost of 260 million yuan. It is now completely covered in long weeds.

On January 16, a resident of the town of Guanhu said that the industrial park had been open for less than three months. When upper-level inspectors had come in the past, the city had hired them to put on work clothes and act as laborers, to the amusement of locals.

A source within the Pizhou Bureau of Land and Resources said that most of the businesses that had purchased factories were actually in search of low-cost grounds that they could turn around and sell in a few years when prices rose.

Regarding the illegal seizure of land, an office worker at the Pizhou Bureau of Land and Resources said icily on January 13 that he knew nothing beyond the fact that the farmland involved in the January 7 killing had not been pre-approved. Asked a second time, he claimed that business section staffers and the officials in charge had all gone to a meeting in Nanjing. This reporter subsequently made several unsuccessful attempts to contact the Pizhou party and government leadership.

According to publicly available reports, leading economic indicators have shown Pizhou climbing the ranks in Jiangsu Province since 2003, and its “overall strength” has leapt far to the front of northern Jiangsu.

Last year, after Pizhou was named one of the top 100 counties in the country, interest in copying and analyzing the “Pizhou phenomenon” took off nationwide. More than twenty provinces and 300 cities and counties reportedly visited Pizhou in search of answers.

A source within the Pizhou Land Bureau was not particularly optimistic about the visits. To him, taking over large tracts of farmland for other projects is “a project that kills off descendants.” He thinks that in the future, farmland that has been occupied may yet be tilled again.

---

Notes

1. “Lotus Jade” 莲玉 is a homophone for 连玉, the given name of party secretary Li Lianyu. It’s also a near homophone for 炼狱, “purgatory,” but that pun seems less likely in this case. (added 2010.02.05)
2. The claim for the fountain is doubtful.

Edit (2010.02.04): Corrected several “township” designations to “town”.

Update (2010.02.05): View a photo gallery with images of Pizhou’s overbuilt government compounds and the Shagou agriculture park on this forum post.

Employer: RHC International
Location: Shanghai
Date posted: Wednesday, 3rd February 2010
Contract: Permanent
Hours: Full-time
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行政

- 通过电话、电子邮件、或即时通讯工具,和客户进行远程沟通；

- 负责日常行政工作,例如日程安排、网路购物、约会提醒、差旅安排等；

- 管理任务用时,并向客户报告项目每日进程。

数据处理及语言支持

- 利用MS Excel和Word收集及处理数据

- 中英文文件翻译

- 起草并发送双语商务及个人邮件

在线调研

- 开展行业在线调研,包括媒体、科技、电信、新能源、制造业、消费品等行业

- 查询供应商,获取报价,对行业主管进行电话访问

- 提供行业新闻摘要,更新相关股市行情信息

应聘者要求：

- 具有高度灵活性,能迅速了解客户需求,并独立创造解决方法

- 能熟练运用中英文商务语言,听说读写流利

- 精通运用互联网和MS Office 工具

- 适应创业型公司环境和企业文化

- 具备优秀的沟通技能,能够与客户建立并保持良好关系

- 工作积极主动,能在无人监管的环境下独立工作

- 了解不同文化和行业

- 有行政、知识流程外包（KPO）、定制调研经验者优先

如对上述职位感兴趣,请将您的简历和求职信发送到hr@righthandchina.com,在求职信中,请说明您对此职位的兴趣及相应的能力。

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