Global Voices Online

A news website, China Labour net has been launched. According to the launching statement: the aim of this website is to facilitate sharing of information, experiences and opinion of the labour movement between China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the rest of the world. We will regularly upload articles on the workers’ movement, political economy, cultural thinking and monitoring of corporations from this region and from other areas.

Leocardo [pt] describes how the melamine crisis has changed some of the consumer habits in Macau. He inquired the owner of the family owned supermarket next to his home if she had noticed any differences. “She told she had, and some Portuguese products had registered a vertiginous rise in sales… Talking about prices, a package of Compal passion fruit juice cost 9.90 patacas before the “crisis”, and now costs 13.50. It is very natural.”

Leocardo [pt] reports that the 63 Chinese medal winners have arrived today in Macau, part of a tour of China that, accorging to the blogger, made they look like “monkeys in a circus”: “Couldn't they have rested a few more days before this enormous embarrassment on the news across regional and foreign press? Is this the right way to demonstrate the unity and love for the SAR?”

Leocardo [pt] remarks that crime rates in on the rise in Macao: “In general, crime has increased more than 11% this year compared with the same period last year. We are exposed to professional thieves, many of them from mainland China, which makes it difficult to trace the problem. Authorities feel they are powerless, they are more concerned with drugs traffic (a war they are losing), organized crime (increasingly insignificant) or these new “evils”, online crimes (which one?), or human trafficking (mummy why did they take dad?).”

Laocardo [pt] reports that 13 tonnes of supplies offered by the Red Cross of Macau were donated today to the relief of Sichuan victims, in China. The blogger reminds readers to be generous but cautious “Make sure that donation collectors are well identified, because - and unfortunately it is normal to happen in these situations - some people take advantage of benefactors for personal profit”.

Nuno Lima Bastos [pt] writes an article about two pieces of news this week: the arrest of an individual suspected of instigating the Olympic torch theft in Macao and the entry refusal for two pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong. “The two men complained to the South China Morning Post and, frankly, the image of Macao starts to get “fired” even before the Olympic flame arrives here.”

The Macau Chief Executive Edmund Ho claimed that the government would suspend the development of gambling industry. Lang qing felt that such claim was just political slogan as most of the Casino projects had been approved and the gambling industry would continue to double or triple its growth in the coming few years [zh].

The Macau government decided to give every citizen 5000 dollars for relieving the inflation problem. Long ching noticed that rather than appreciating such move, people are skeptical of the policy [zh].

Leocardo [pt] comments on this week's Amnesty International's report that ranked China the first in the world in the number of executions in 2007 (470), followed by Iran (317), Saudi Arabia (143), Pakistan (135) and the US (42). He analyzes the social issues behind death penalty in China and is surprised by the “Amnesty International's hipocrisy”. “I would make it clear, first of all, that I am against capital punishment. But we must try to understand the social and cultural causes behind a punishment that seems to be, for most of us free and democratic souls, an act of desperation.”