Does anyone else in the world know about this?

There seems to have been no mainstream news reporting about the most recent student murder case at Virginia Tech. Last Wednesday, January 21, a Chinese graduate student, Yang Xin (female), was decapitated by a fellow Chinese graduate student in the cafe on the university. Zhu Haiyang is charged with first-degree murder and is currently in custody. Motives are still unclear. See Shanghaiist post and youtube clip here. The youtube clip is a tape of local news.

Of course I'm very curious about why the crime happened, but what really disturbs me is why no one in US media seems to care about it. Here are the only two mainstream sources I found: a Chicago Tribune article that doesn't even talk about the victim or murderer and a Huffington post article from AP reporting that provides a smidge more detail on the crime. Both articles focus on the trigger and use of the "crisis notification system" installed after the massacre at VTech in 2007 (where 30 students died at the hands of Seung-Hui Cho). No biographical details about the individuals involved in the 2009 case are provided. Were these reports too immediate (too "breaking") to release those details? If so, why haven't subsequent reports disclosed more information? Or is there no medida attention because it's just seen as an ethnic case? (Chinese on Chinese doesn't matter.) Or because it's just one death, not 30? Or am I just making this a bigger deal than it really is?

Please share your thoughts!


Linda Li '09

Eating Humble Pie

Last month, I pondered the usefulness of an entire new rifle platform based on a rather unrefined bullpup layout and an entirely new type of ammunition.

Well, it turns out the PLA is having second thoughts as well. Enter the QBZ03, a new, more conventional rifle that resembles the lovechild of a FAL and a SIG. It still uses the proprietary 5.8x47 ammunition.

Also, it seems to have three rings on the flash-hider, which wouldn’t be a surprise considering PLA’s fetish with rifle grenades.

PS: could someone translate the Chinese for me?

--Kane Hsieh '12

Fakes ONLY in Shanghai

After my trips to Asia, I've come to the conclusion that if fake brand name items is your thing, China is the place to go! From Furberry to Lois Vuitton to Puna to Diore- take your pick! It looks like a Fakes Only Mall is set to open in Shanghai. Read this short article for more info. Enjoy!

- Eva Luo '08

NYT: China Censors Part of Obama's Speech

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/world/asia/22china.html?hp

Interesting, huh? The controversial section seems to be Obama's mention of "communism." While I was listening to Obama's speech, the thought of China did cross my mind when Obama said "communism."

Is China overreacting? What kind of message is the Chinese government sending to the world and its own people in censoring part of Obama's Speech? Thoughts?

-- Eva Luo '08

WSJ: "A Japanese General Rewrites the Past"

An interesting article from the WSJ, about re-writing history, in this case in relation to Japanese involvement in WWII.

It doesn't always pay to be different

Cultural tradition has always been a sticking point for China, especially with the recent boom in modernization tending towards much “westernization.” China struggles to find its unique place as an Eastern nation keeping up with the socio/political/economic/technological standards of the West. Often, this results in emulation of the West with just enough of a twist to make things uniquely Chinese. Take for instance the new People’s Liberation Army QBZ-95 rifle and the 5.8x42 round. Developed in the 1980’s, the 5.8x42 “DPB87” was more similar to the NATO 5.56x45, a decidedly Western ballistics standard, than the Russian 7.62x39 used in various previous Chinese iterations of the venerable AK series. A new rifle family, the QBZ-95, was also introduced to chamber the new DPB87.

The QBZ-95, first seen with Chinese guards during China’s retaking of Hong Kong, is a modern firearm in every aspect – synthetic materials, bullpup design (in which the bullet chambers behind the trigger), and much more refined buffer system for the DPB87; however, the QBZ-95 failed to fix issues faced by existing bullpup designs. It is extremely awkward to fire prone, its integrated open sights give it an unnecessarily high line of sight, and its rightward-facing ejection port situated behind the trigger very close to the cheek makes it impossible to fire from the left shoulder, making it useless for left-handed shooters. Belgians fixed this issue with a downward-facing ejection port, and Germans fixed it (at least conceptually) with a few experiments in caseless ammunition. The new buffer system, while designed with the best intentions to fully exploit the new capabilities of the DPB87, is more complex than any previous rifles used by the PLA. This brings us to the crux of the confusing new rifle: the DPB87 itself. China has claimed extensive testing has shown it to be more effective in terms of trajectory and penetration than both the NATO round and the newer-generation AKs rounds (5.45x39), and in fact, it has shown 100% penetration of a NATO A3 steel test plate at 300 meters. However, it is immediately apparent that the DPB87 was designed with penetration in mind. It’s cavity in ballistic gel is inferior to both comparable NATO and AK rounds, both of which are already designed with attenuated stopping power in mind. Interestingly enough, the QBZ-97 is a variation for export that uses the NATO round.

China’s need to keep pace yet stay unique has left it with a new high-tech rifle with few obvious advantages that chambers an equally niche-less round. While it certainly shows China’s progressive modernization, what purpose does it really serve? This is one case when China would’ve fared better just submitting to a Western standard.

-Kane

Historical Resources

For us students of history and China, these online resources are fascinating and definitely worth checking out:

1. A new online collection of Xinhua News photos from the Cultural Revolution.

2. Gerald Warner collection of photos and postcards from colonial Taiwan, from 1937-1941.

3. Digitized photos from a Japanese book edited by Yamaki Kinichiro, also in the Warner collection.


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h/t Jottings from Granite Studio


Linda '09
lindali@fas.harvard.edu