chong's blog

Hi everyone!!!

As some of you might already know via facebook,MediAct is having a re-opening ceremony in a new space in Sangam-dong at 6:30 pm, May 14, launching MediAct 3.0 with a community of sustainers. IndieSpace is also resuming its activity with an online project in May.

However this does not mean that MediAct and IndieSpace's struggle against KOFIC is over. MediAct filed a lawsuit with IndieForum (two timelines of activities are available on the Act Now to Save Mediact Facebook site).While that legal battle continues, they are trying to start alternative space and activities.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=113045885402941

*Liu Shih-Diing and Lou Lai-Chu Ivy have just published an article titled "The Internet as Macau's Alternative Public Sphere." in Mass Communication Research(Issue no. 102, January, 2010, p. 253-293). What follows is a summary. For the full version, please go here.

Liu and Lou highlight the importance of the resistant or alternative meanings generated in the Internet in Macau, a city in which the mainstream media and political institutions fail to help people to voice out and monitor the government. Hence, the Internet becomes a field formed by contesting discourses in which the people engage in the struggle for discursive power and resistant spaces. Since the handover in 1999, the Internet has played an important role in engaging people in political and social controversies. However, according to the authors' observation, the public sphere enabled by the Internet in Macau is still a "weak" one without substantial power to initiate social reform.

After global petition to the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), it released a public letter to explain the fact and situation. It explained that it conducted a public tender to find a managing team for the Media Center in 2009, instead of appointing MediACT as the operator. However, considering MediACT's 7 years of experience and 300-pages planning document, some critics still questioned the fairness of the procedure. The formal response from MediACT is yet to be seen. But some independent people already raise some issues and questions. For example, why is a new management team able to oust MediACT who had been running the center for 7 years.

The public letter by KOFIC is shown as below:

Author/Poon Ka Wai

Recently, I have been concerned with the news about some civic organizations repressed by the authority. What is involved is the China government's restricting the registration of civic organizations and receiving foreign sponsorship. I have some knowledge about the mainland churches who have been pushed by the government to "register". Both civic organization and churche are a part of "civil society". Here I would like share my views regarding these problems.

A legal aid group in Beijing was recently shut down by the government and was subject to a penalty of 1.2 million yuan (US$175,000) for alleged tax evasion. Xu Zhidong, a member of the group, was detained by the authority on July 30. By coincidence, in Hong Kong, a supposedly free city of China, two cultural preservationists were suddenly charged with HK$270,000 (US$34,000) as a compensation for the cost of a judicial review two years ago. Money seems to be a new weapon for the Beijing and Hong Kong governments to suppress the civil society.

Hong Kong's media self-censorship has suddenly become the talk of the town in this summer.

This year is the 20th anniversary of the June 4 massacre, the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement, which is an incident enormously changing the political path of Hong Kong and Mainland China. It is natural for many local media to widely cover this issue, particularly after some pro-Beijing figures came out to defend the repression of student movement. Yet the largest local TV station, Television Broadcast Limited Hong Kong (TVB), is an exception. Some netizens accused it of down-playing all related issues in its daily news report and program.

A black T-shirt caused the massive arrest of 116 opposition members by the Malaysian government. It almost breaks the record set by the notorious Operasi Lalang more than 20 years ago in which 119 social activists, oppositions and religious people were arrested for violating the Internal Security Act.

Written by Torrent
Translated by chong

Back from Dongguan. There is something not convenient to talk in Mainland China. Now I want to grumble about it.

I really don't know what Apple is messing up. On April 20, I went to the factory of Masstop in Sangyuen Industrial District (Dongguan) and interviewed workers outside the factory. It was already three days after the strike. The owner usually takes repressive measure to control the workers. Masstop is no exception. The workers were most probably afraid of being retaliation and did not talk much. But if you really want to ask something, you would get it. If Apple had sent a delegate to hang around outside the factory for a whole day, he/she could have know what bad things the Masstop is doing.

(Full article in Chinese) Excerpt:

You think that the building of "Bird's Nest" (Beijing National Stadium) is a process of merging Chinese design with internationalization. In this process, what insights do we get and what is the impact on the future?

(Originally in Chinese published at inmediahk.net - Author/Gilles Deleuze (alias)

I want to talk about the recent development of several newspapers in Hong Kong.

In terms of capital and ownership structures, the biggest change is about Ming Pao. Ming Pao Ltd is going to merge with two listed companies in Malaysia, Sinchew and Nanyang. But the plan is not yet implemented. According to this plan, Sinchew and Nanyang, no longer listed in Malaysia, will be owned by Ming Pao. Ming Pao might be listed in the stock markets of Hong Kong and Malaysia.