One of 2oceansvibe’s favourite South Africans and former guest, Koos Bekker, conducted an interview with Summit TV and featured on BDlive. Click through to see what Koos has to say about newspapers, digital media, Naspers, their operations in China, and acquisitions.
China is preparing for its new president, and one of the most glamorous First Ladies world politics has ever seen. But will she match up to Not-The-Real-Excellent Horse-Like Lady?
Foxconn, the largest electronics manufacturer in the world, has admitted that some of its employees may not have met the minimum age of employment in China. Already a subject of huge controversy surrounding its labour conditions, this latest allegation is not helping the manufacturer’s ailing reputation.
Today marks the beginning of the National Day Golden Week, a seven-day long national holiday in China. In celebration of the occasion, the government decided to lift the tolls on all of the country’s roads, prompting a flood of eager travellers and some of the worst traffic jams ever seen – by last night there were already 85 million people on the roads, up 13% from the previous year.
In order to keep them from “ruining the experience for visitors”, organisers of the annual temple fair in Nanchang, China, have ordered beggars to stay in purposely built cages. Those beggars not willing to comply with this are simply banished from the city by officials. The zoo-like structures are so small that adults are unable to stand up inside them. Have a look in the gallery below for more detailed images.
When the Suzhou Chinaing Real Estate Company commissioned British architecture practice RMJM to design The Gate to the East, they were hoping for the Eastern answer to Paris’s Arc de Triomphe. Instead, they found the £445 million skyscraper more closely resembled a pair of “giant underpants”.
Nearly all of China’s 396 Olympians qualified for the Games under the patronage of the country’s monolithic Soviet-style sports system. Most are handpicked at an early age – as young as four – by scouts, and attend special schools to train in sports assumed to match physical attributes.
Just as it’s hitting its annual flood peak, China has officially launched the last 32 generators at the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, making it the most powerful hydropower station in the world. Earlier in the week, waterflow through the dame peaked at 70 000 cubic metres per second.
If you weren’t aware of just how prolific Chinese investment is in Africa, wait until you see these startling images of what’s going on in Angola.
Liu Yang, China’s first-ever female astronaut, had a night shift on Shenzhou 9 a couple of days ago – which is apparently sort of dull in space too, because she entertained herself by going through some Tai Chi exercises. In space. And since the spacecraft returned to earth today, we get to see what that looks like.
Broad Sustainable Building, a Chinese construction company, is aiming to assemble an 838m-tall building in Changsha, a city in southern China, beating the Burj Khalifa in Dubai by 10 metres. What’s more, they’re looking to build the thing – dubbed SkyCity One – in 90 days because, well, why not.
Chinese users of online Twitter-alike Weibo can expect extra restrictions to the service in the wake of complaints from several authorities that users were publishing “false rumours” on the site, namely a “points system” to track and punish offensive posts.
The ANC’s Secretary General, Gwede Mantashe, has thrown down the gauntlet to South Africa’s relations with so-called developed Western countries, including the USA and the Eurozone, in favour of cash-rich developing countries like China and India. Is South Africa banking on the East in spite of the West?
The Dalai Lama made news this weekend when he told UK weekly, the Sunday Telegraph that he had been warned the Chinese government was training female assassins in the arts of poison in order to have him killed. China reckons they could have whacked him ages ago. The plot thickens, after the jump!
China is abuzz at the moment with pictures allegedly uploaded by a student at a high school in Hubei Province where learners are given amino acids on IV drips to help them study, while they study!. The photos were uploaded to one of China’s many Twitter-like micro-blogging sites, and we’ve got a full gallery, and the official explanation, after the jump!
One of Australia’s richest men, mining magnate Clive Palmer, has commissioned a Chinese state-owned company to build a replica of the H.M.S. Titanic, and is planning to launch Titanic II at the end of 2016. Our report will go on, after the jump!
This must be one of the most unnerving things I’ve seen in a long time! A Chinese teenager recently (and luckily) escaped with only minor injuries after falling into a sinkhole in Xi’an, northern China. The girl was walking on the sidewalk when the ground swallowed her up. She fell six metres! See the incident after the jump.
During the first six months of 2011 Rachel Katz, a 23-year old American girl, needed to do some research on the trucking industry in China. She started at the most logical place, by hopping in a truck and taking a small journey. And then she did it again, with another truck, and then another until she had covered the better part of the third largest country in the world.
Fashion students at Chengdu University of Technology in China recently pumped all their creativity and innovation into a theatrical lingerie show displaying various wonderful designs, except…er, wait, scratch creativity and innovation off the list because each and every one was a Vicky’s Secret knock off! FAIL! Full gallery after the jump.
What’s hot on TV in China’s Henan Province these days? Just a little show where death row inmates are interviewed moments before they are killed for their crimes. The show is called “Interview Before Execution” and it has China riveted to the tune of nearly 40 million viewers every week.
A suicidal woman who was about to jump off a bridge in Beijing whilst clutching on to her baby, was pulled back at the last moment by a police officer. Passersby also rushed in and snatched the child from her arms. Footage of this harrowing scene captured by surveillance cameras has been released, and can be seen after the jump.
No journalist has ever gained access to Foxconn, the secretive company that builds all the beautiful iPads and iPhone and Macbooks that Apple gets us to consume like sweeties. ABC’s show Nightline managed to gain access to this factory which employs 250 000 people and is the size of a city (they also make products […]
One Chinese family in Xinxiang City, Henan Province has gotten the Year of the Dragon off to a stellar start, producing the heaviest newborn ever recorded in China, weighing in at a whopping 15,52lb, or just over 7kg!
China is at it again. When they’re not building war-machines, churning out electronics and manufacturing cars at the speed of light, they’re constructing 30-storey hotels in the time it usually takes to get your call answered by Telkom customer service.
The ashes of Janice Linden, the South African woman who was executed in China for drug smuggling, have finally been returned to local shores. Her family was devastated to receive a plain brown cardboard box containing the remains of their daughter from Chinese authorities. The South African powers-that-be have been criticised for not doing enough to stop the execution.
Yesterday morning China launched its own satellite navigation service, The Beidou Navigation Satellite System, an alternative to the America Global Positioning System (GPS). The system could have serious implications both in terms of civilian and, more importantly, military application.
Love is in the air at Yunnan Wild Animal Park in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China, as millions of Chinese internet users have flooded staff at the park with requests to keep a very odd couple together.
Key decision makers on the global climate change issue have been hesitant to make a conclusive call at the COP17 talks, which are currently being held in Durban. There are major concerns that the world’s only legally binding climate agreement could sink entirely.
Massive unidentified structures have been spotted from space by Google Earth. The weird shapes, one of which contains three jets parked in what looks like a concentric circle, are raising all sorts of concerns. The reasons for this is that they come from the Gobi desert, which is a region that is well known for it’s use by China for testing it’s military, space and nuclear programmes.
Effective January 1, 2012, the minimum wage is going to increase by as much as 20% in Guangdong, the industrial province in China where most of the stuff you’ve bought in the past decade was produced. Which means you’ve got yourself a significant rise in consumer good prices worldwide incoming.