How to Make a Film About Tibetans That Has appeal in China
“Nowhere to Call Home” is the kind of documentary about Tibetan people in China made by foreigners, in this case an American and former NPR journalist, that has intrigued audiences. The film does not engage in self-righteous rhetoric or polemical attacks against China’s “human rights” record. It is rather a fair and personal portrayal of ordinary Tibetans and their trials and tribulations trying to eek out a living in the nation’s capital.
Tibetans face discrimination in Chinese cities, in part because of traumatic events such as self emulations that have occurred over the past few years which the Dalai Lama and his supporters fail to condemn. Only by seeing Tibetans as ordinary human beings with the same problems, albeit more acute, as people among the Han majority have will more Chinese be encouraged to see the film and be empathetic to their plight. And that’s the main purpose of the film.
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An American filmmaker has made a documentary on Tibet. Those two elements alone might seem grounds for China’s Communist Party to ban it, but instead the film — Nowhere to Call Home — quietly has been making the rounds in China and winning praise from local audiences.
The reason? The film is an even-handed, deeply personal story that steers clear of politics. Journalist Jocelyn Ford spent years documenting the life of Zanta, a Tibetan migrant who fled her poor, mountain village to build a life for herself and her son in Beijing.
The film, which is simply shot, depicts the abuse Zanta faces in her Tibetan village because she’s a woman and the discrimination she faces in the Chinese capital because she’s Tibetan.
Part of the movie’s appeal is that it demystifies Tibet, which has long held a special place in the Western imagination. In the 1930s novel, Lost Horizon, a British diplomat crash lands in Tibet’s snow-covered mountains and discovers peaceful Buddhists who never age.
“Shangri-La. It was a strange and incredible sight,” says the diplomat, played by actor Ronald Colman, in a 1941 radio play based on the novel. “A group of colored pavilions clinging to the mountainside, like flower petals impaled upon a crag. It was superb and exquisite.”
“We have an expression,” says Zanta, referring to her community. “‘Women aren’t worth a penny.’ Our men are ferocious. If a woman misspeaks, they belt her.”
Zanta, a widow, is battling her father-in-law for custody of her son. The old man, who lives in a largely pre-industrial village, sees no need for the boy, Yang Qing, to attend school. He holds onto Zanta’s and her son’s government-issued ID cards as a way to control them.
Despondent, Zanta moves to Beijing with the boy to seek a better life but has trouble finding long-term lodging. Landlords, who often see Tibetans as oafish and uncivilized, discriminate against her. In one scene, Zanta complains to police after a landlord reneges on renting her an apartment.
“This is an insult to all Tibetans. I’ve lost face,” says Zanta.
“We are all Chinese,” responds a police officer, who is Han Chinese, the country’s dominant ethnic group.
“Chinese bully Tibetans,” Zanta replies bitterly.
Ford, a former China correspondent for public radio’s “Marketplace,” met Zanta while she was selling jewelry on the streets of Beijing in 2005. They exchanged phone numbers. Two years later, Zanta called out of the blue.
Short of money and struggling to raise Yang Qing, she asked if she could give him to the journalist. Instead, Ford began helping finance the boy’s education and documenting Zanta’s life.
Ford is open about crossing the traditional line that separates journalist and subject and even notes when her presence influences the outcome of scenes. By being transparent about her friendship and support of Zanta, Ford says she leaves it to the audience to decide whether her involvement is appropriate.
“When I started making the film, I didn’t think I had a hope in high heaven of showing it in China,” said Ford, following a screening in Shanghai this week. Ford says Chinese audiences seem able to accept the film because it’s a personal journey — not a polemic.
The story can be listened at:
China On Top Again in Clean Energy Investment: Bloomberg
Many foreigners, especially Americans, mock China for its atrocious air pollution but few realize the extent to which the government and Chinese companies are investing in clean energy solutions. Here is a synopsis:
China kept the crown for global clean energy investment in 2014, particularly solar and wind. The Bloomberg New Energy Finance report said the country’s investment in clean energy last year hit a record US$89.5 billion, a 32% jump over 2013 and accounting for about 28.9% of the world’s total. Investment worldwide totaled US$310 billion, up 16%, driven by surges in investment in solar energy in China and the United States, and offshore wind energy in Europe.
In 2013, China generated more than 5.4 TWh (1000 GWh) of electricity, about 1.1 TWh more than the US (or as much as the US and India combined). China’s investment in hydroelectric, wind, solar and nuclear power capacity increased by 40% between 2008 and 2012, from 138 billion RMB (US$22 billion) to around 200 billion RMB. Hydroelectricity accounts for the vast majority of power generated through renewables that now reaches 9.6% of all energy used in China, up from 5.6% in 2000 and on track to reach 20% by 2020.
In 2013, China added 16.1 GW to total 91.4 GW of installed wind power capacity, cumulatively growing by 21% – well on track to reach and surpass the 100 GW wind power target by 2015. Citigroup estimated China’s super windy provinces – Hebei, Gansu, Xinjiang, Jiangsu, Jilin, and Inner Mongolia – could easily install 131 GW of capacity by the end of the decade while a government plan looks to installing 200 GW.
Meanwhile, solar power stood at 19.4 GW with almost 13 GW added in 2013 itself. With such an aggressive installation pace, China stands an excellent chance of installing 35 GW solar power capacity by the end of the year. China is also upgrading its power grid to accommodate power fluctuations and distributed generation for intermittent sources.
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– China Daily/Asia News Network: http://news.asiaone.com/news/business/china-retains-global-top-spot-clean-energy-investment
China to Set Up VC Fund to Spur Innovation
On this blog, I’ve talked about China’s dramatic rise on various annual assessments of worldwide patent registrations; on China’s ambition of becoming an innovation superpower by 2020; on the UN’s positivity viz. China’s innovation trajectory; and so on. Now, the Chinese government is putting state funds into private innovation through the setting up of this VC fund. This is a major initiative focusing on start-ups that will spur private Chinese innovation into the next decade.
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China will set up a government venture capital fund worth 40 billion yuan (US$6.45 billion) to support start-ups in emerging industries, in its latest move to support the private sector and foster innovation.
“It will also help breed and foster sunrise industries for the future and promote (China’s) economy to evolve towards the medium and high ends,” it said in the statement published in the government’s website, www.gov.cn,, referring to sectors which the government is promoting such as technology and green energy.
The government issued the statement after a meeting on Wednesday. It did not give a timetable, but past experience has shown that such a fund could be established within a few weeks after an announcement.
China’s venture capital market remains small, the legacy of the country’s decades of the planned economy in which private sector’s development is largely subject to a great variety of restrictions.
In the first half of 2014, 83 new funds were set up in China’s venture capital market, with fresh capital eligible for investment in the mainland surging 157 percent from a year earlier, but remaining at a moderate $6.76 billion, according to a research by Zero21PO Capital, a service provider and investment institution in China’s private equity industry.
During the period, 517 investment cases occurred in the market, with details of 440 made public on a combined investment capital of $5.3 billion, the research showed.
Still, the government is increasingly supporting the expansion of the industry since two years ago when mapped out a strategy to let market forces to eventually play a “decisive” role in China’s economy.
Last month, for instance, regulators issued new rules to allow insurance companies to invest their huge pool of premiums in venture capital funds for the first time.
The cabinet said in Wednesday’s statement that the planned fund would be funded by the government’s existing capital designated for expansion of emerging industries and by state corporates, while also inviting private partners to participate in.
The fund will render public tenders to invite high processional asset managements to operate, with returns giving priority to private investors, it said.
– Reuters
The Taxman Cometh
Knew it would happen someday and it’s beginning this year: China’s taxman is going after Chinese nationals worldwide for income tax. China is now the second nation after the US to tax based on citizenship not residency. China is bearing down on nationals earning large incomes overseas as it prepares for increasing social security budgets in the coming decades.
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When the political leaders of the People’s Republic of China decided to modernize the country’s federal tax system in the early 1990s, they carefully examined the rules in place in other counties. They eventually concluded their empire-building ambitions would best be served by adopting the key design features of the IRC — including citizenship-based taxation of personal income.
Yet for the past 20 years, China’s State Administration of Taxation (SAT) has declined to enforce this rule. As a result, Chinese expats have grown accustomed to not paying Chinese income taxes on their foreign salaries. The government’s failure to apply the law has been attributed to limited organizational resources inside the SAT and the non-availability of pertinent income data from private employers. It’s also been suggested that by going soft on expats, the government indirectly promotes the expansion and global influence of Chinese firms.
Whatever the case, Beijing is no longer looking the other way. Beginning in 2015, the government expects all Chinese citizens residing abroad to include their foreign salary and wages in taxable income. Why the change? The best answer appears to be that the Chinese government needs the money to meet its spending needs.
Viewed in isolation, this development could easily be overlooked. But when considered alongside other recent steps, it seems clear that China’s central government is newly emboldened when it comes to revenue collection. As this trend continues, it wouldn’t be surprising to see China’s tax framework become more like America’s with each passing year.
– Forbes
Han Officials Must Learn Tibetan to Serve in Tibet
This is administrative reform that took too long in coming. Another commonsensical rule that took President Xi’s exhortation to realize.
Not only a ruling but a law should be introduced for all Han officials serving in minority areas. In addition to Tibetan for Tibet proper and areas with high Tibetan populations in Sichuan and Qinghai; Uighur, Kazakh or Tajik in Xinjiang; Mongolian in Inner Mongolia; Dai, Miao, Zhuang, Yi and others in Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guangxi, and so on. Officials can achieve far more with far less misunderstanding if they are able to converse with local people in their own tongue.
Of course, the opposite should be the case, too. Gladly, slowly but surely, through mandatory bilingual education at the primary and secondary school levels, ethnic minority children are learning “Putonghua” (the common language) or better known as Mandarin to Westerners, albeit with regional accents.
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Mastery of the Tibetan language will become a requirement for non-native cadres in China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. All seven prefecture-level cities in Tibet have started organizing Tibetan language training for non-native cadres, according to the regional bureau of compilation and translation on Monday.
Qoizha, deputy director of the bureau, said they have handed out 40,000 books on basic Tibetan language for daily conversation.
President Xi Jinping stressed at a conference on ethnic work in September 2014 that in ethnic regions, ethnic minority cadres should learn Mandarin, and Han cadres should also learn ethnic languages. The language skill should become a “requirement” for cadres. “One cannot serve the local people well if one cannot speak the local language,” Xi said.
Tibet has adopted a bilingual policy since the regional legislature passed a law in 1987 stipulating both Tibetan language and Mandarin as official languages in the region.
Qoizha said over 90 percent of Tibet’s population of 3 million is of Tibetan ethnicity. Breaking the language hurdle can help non-native cadres better interact with local communities. In the past 20 years, close to 6,000 cadres and technical professionals from various Chinese provinces and municipalities have been sent to help develop the southwestern autonomous region of Tibet. Cadres usually stay in the region for three years.
According to Wang Fengchao, deputy head of the Organization Department of the Tibet autonomous regional committee of the Communist Party of China, seven cadre cohorts from 18 provincial regions have been sent to 74 counties and cities in the southwest region since 1994, when the cadre aid program was launched. They have worked in fields such as the economy, technology, education, and medical science.
Zhao Lei, a cadre working in Zantang Township of Shannan Prefecture, said simple conversation in the local tongue can bring a feeling of intimacy between people. He said he hopes to learn more Tibetan so he won’t have to depend on his Tibetan colleagues for interpretation wherever he goes.
Cering Banjor, Party chief of the No. 4 Chadang Village in Nagqu Prefecture, said the village committee has helped Han cadres find language partners for the required language training. Most of them have been able to use Tibetan for simple conversations.
Qoizha said in addition to Tibetan-language reading materials, the regional government plans to produce bilingual language-learning TV programs to help civil servants learn the language.
– (Xinhua) English.news.cn