If you’re unfamiliar with the urban migrant phenomenon in China — as in, the people who make the stuff you buy and their lives — then China’s Urban Immigrants: A Diet of Bitterness is a fine overview with lots of links for further reading.

“Chinese metropolises are now home to an estimated 200 million rural-to-urban migrants . . . who occupy a precarious place in the urban hierarchy: while urbanites appreciate their labor, they are less enthusiastic about the migrants’ presence in their cities.”

For more on this topic you can browse our Migrant Workers category, or if you like documentaries, see these reviews of two good documentaries on migrant workers:

• China documentaries (Pt.2): rivers, migrants & entrepreneurs
• China documentaries (Pt. 1): blue jeans and revolutions

When one of my young, very privileged Party-family students passionately told me, “Chairman Mao is like a god to us!” I understood he meant it as a simile. And the god metaphor is common when discussing Mao and his Cultural Revolution personality cult. But as it turns out, in some incredible irony, some other Chinese mean it literally. I heard about this before, but this is the first time I’ve found pictures — Mao actually enshrined in a local temple: Mao Temple in China – Chairman Mao Becomes Local God.

For more about Mao and the Mao Era, you can browse these topics:

• Cultural Revolution
• Great Leap Forward
• Liberation

Two insightful posts from Seeing Red in China, which is probably my current favourite China blog, about living in an aggressively and explicitly propagandized environment, and how Chinese try to deal with it. The propaganda still works, but in ways different than us foreigners probably tend to assume. Without further ado:

• Poisoned By Propaganda
• An Angry Father

I tell [my daughter] that she must not be afraid to take a clear moral stand. “If you see someone is being bullied,” I said, “speak up for that person.” “Be the keeper of the good.” [But] Chinese parents would have to think twice, three times, or even lose sleep, if they are to instill these values in their children, because these qualities won’t serve them very well in the Chinese society.

We’ve written lots on propaganda, mostly the Chinese kind, including translations of the propaganda we’ve encounter in China. You can find it all in our Propaganda category.

Gutter oil, aka 地沟油, is back in the news again (again), but this time with a twist. Instead of buying the waste oil out the back of restaurants at night or scooping it out of the manholes where restaurants discard their used oil, this time they’re making cooking oil from animal waste fat, rotten meat and viscera from slaughter houses. The China Daily reports that a recent crackdown netted 13 underground workshops, 3200 tonnes of oil, and over 100 suspects. Would you rather have the sewer version or the slaughterhouse version?

Over 100 arrested for making ‘gutter oil’

Previously in gutter oil news:

• GROOOOOOOSS!
• Re-sold Chinese sewer oil hits the news again
• Chinese Breakfast: Tianjin style!
• 地沟油

More than once I’ve found Andrew Hong’s Chinese Culture category to be a good source for easy introductions to basic, relevant Confucianism. Here’s the latest:

Confucianism – and the mandate of heaven (part 1)

Confucianism has a strong focus on the leader as the chief means for bringing about peace and harmony. And one important dynamic that shapes the Confucian leaders’ understanding of their place in all things is the concept of the Mandate of Heaven (tianming, 天命). And this concept continues to influence how Chinese leaders understand their role today. . .

I assume Confucianists would find plenty to pick at in these brief introductions – heck, I don’t even agree with some of his theology and exegesis – but if you know next to nothing about Confucianism, this is a handy place to start.

The International Institute of Social History has a collection of Chinese propaganda posters with translations and explanations in three categories:
1. Early years (1949-1965);
2. Cultural Revolution (1966-1976);
3. Modernization (1977-1997).

“Elect Good People to Do Good Things”

China’s politically turbulent 20th century gave each generation drastically different experiences, resulting in sharp differences in attitude and outlook between Mainlanders who came of age in the 70′s, 80′s, and 90′s. Ministry of Tofu has a very handy overview of the basic stereotypes: Post-1970s, Post-1980s, Post-1990s – The enhanced Chinese generation gap

In my opinion, the problem of First World consumers profiting from the abuse of less-privileged in developing countries is much bigger than Apple, though as a global industry leader Apple is a legitimate lightening rod for criticism. (If you want to argue about the Apple/Foxconn factory worker situation in general, I suggest joining this thread, just to keep that discussion in one place.) Anyway, here’s an Apple-critical infographic based on a report from a Hong Kong advocacy group: iKill

[Update:] After an audit, Foxconn/Apple promise to do better, in the summer of 2013:
FLA-led Foxconn audit finds violations, fixes promised
The first report on Foxconn’s Chinese factories from the Fair Labor Association says the Apple manufacturer violated standards in working hours and compensation, but plans to make changes to fix those things.

Baidu would have been Google’s main competitor in China, if Google had been allowed to compete. Dr. Mary Ann O’Donnell has discovered that a particular very taboo search term is apparently no longer taboo. She perceives a significant power shift, concluding, “it signals the end of the Jiang era. The Two Meetings are churning relentlessly forward and it seems that power has been wrested from Jiang [Zemin]’s hands.” This raises other questions about the possibility that other related and extremely sensitive topics might be opened up in the near future, and what that indicates regarding the character and attitudes toward information of China’s next batch of leaders.

This is especially intriguing given the recent political “Bo-mb” dropped by the authorities last week, and the power struggles that may indicate.

I’d describe her post more clearly if it weren’t loaded with sensitive search terms. So you’ll have to go read it yourself.

Related stuff:

• Recent propaganda from Tianjin, China: evil, scheming, bloodthirsty cults!
• Chinese “evil cult” propaganda in our Canadian mailbox

According to a study published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, young, Chinese non-residents and new immigrants are the predominant ethnic group having abortions and impacting New Zealand’s abortion statistics. Many factors are mentioned, including, “ethnic Chinese women lack adequate contraceptive education, demonstrate distrust of non-barrier methods, believe men should provide the condom, and mistakenly believe contraception unnecessary for the first week following menstruation. . .Abortion may be used for family planning, rather than as back up for contraceptive failure.” See Non-Resident Birth Care and Abortion.

For more on abortion and China:

• Chinese “birth tourism” & “passport babies” in Canada
• Asian ‘gendercide’ in Canada — our local paper opens an explosive can of worms
• The All Girls Allowed 2011 annual report
• Review of Xinran’s “Message From an Unknown Chinese Mother”
• “Painless”, “cozy”, “cheerful”, “3-minute”, “sweet dream” abortions in Tianjin, China
• When the news is real life
• Chinese Academy of Social Sciences publishes the latest and most negative data on sex-selective abortion in China
• Largest gender gap seen in China’s youngest generation