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Incident at Shenzhen bus stop lands a man in jail; questions over what happened

Posted: 12/3/2012 7:00 am

A man has been sent to jail after a relatively minor altercation at a Shenzhen bus stop as the city cracks down on uncivilized behaviour.

A pregnant woman in Longgang District claims she was groped from behind by a stranger while she was waiting for the bus, according to Shenzhen Satellite Television, but the man had a different story.

The woman, surnamed Li, was standing at Minle bus stop with her aunt, minding her own business, when she was frightened by somebody grabbing her shoulder from behind. Initially, she thought that it was her husband but she turned round to see a perfect stranger who she reported to the police.  The man claimed he just “bumped into her”.

The woman’s aunt saw fit to take the man downtown to Minzhi Police Station where he defended himself.

The pregnant woman and her relative described the physical contact between the two as a “bearhug” whereas the man said he just bumped into her at the busy bus stop.  The truth must be somewhere in between, as the man has been detained for 15 days.

We told you in July about how the Shenzhen Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress was introducing measures to combat gender inequality, including laws against sexual harrassment.

Earlier this year, Shenzhen launched a drive to promote civilized behaviour and its buses and subway trains are all adorned with signs urging people to give up their seats to pregnant women.

Haohao

The guy who blew the whistle on a corrupt Shenzhen cadre has been arrested

Posted: 11/29/2012 1:00 pm

The netizen who accused cadre Zhou Weisi of illegally owning 80 properties and 20 vehicles has been arrested for economic crimes, according to China Daily.

We told you yesterday about Zhou, a cadre of Nanlian Community in Longgang District, who’s accused online of illegally amassing around 2 billion RMB in assets. Now his accuser, Zhou Zujie, has been arrested for suspected false declarations of the registered capital for four companies.

Police said an investigation into Zhou Zujie’s alleged economic crimes began in May, when they received tip-offs from the public claiming that he had falsely reported the registered capital for the companies he set up in 2010. The companies were involved in urban afforestation, urban engineering, property management and cleaning, according to Shenzhen Daily.

Zhou Zujie is also accused to have fraudulently claimed property demolition compensation of more than three million yuan in Guangdong in 2007.

Police said a recent investigation proved that the registered capital for Zhou Zujie’s companies is indeed far less than declared, which finally led to his arrest.

Initially, Zhou Weisi, who has been suspended, said he welcomed the investigation and asserted that he was the target of defamation. At this moment, he is at least not the only person whose reputation is under threat.

Haohao

18 unlicensed bars closed down in Shenzhen after murder

Posted: 10/16/2012 1:13 pm

18 bars have been shut down on Hong Mofang Street in Shenzhen’s Longhua New Zone after police discovered they were all unlicensed during the investigation of a murder which took place Oct. 11, Chinese-language media have reported.

At 1 a.m. on Oct. 11, a man surnamed Chen drunkenly attacked a man surnamed Tang with a knife after mistakenly thinking he was starting a fight in Gemi Bar. Tang was stabbed in the chest and didn’t survive, Chen was detained.

An investigation into the bar showed it had inadequate fire safety equipment, and a further investigation showed that many of the bars lacked fire safety equipment or their existing equipment had expired.

The city’s Ministry of Culture discovered that all of the bars had seen their licences expire in 2009 or 2010. Authorities in Longhua explained that their cooperation with the Baoan District government had decreased in recent years as they had been given more autonomy.

For this reason, there was a failure to delegate responsibility.

In May of this year, Lu Yi, Party chief of Longhua New Zone told reporters: “Longhua is planning 200 billion yuan (US$32 billion) of investments in the next five years to become a high-standard, booming region. The GDP will increase 100 billion yuan by 2015.” Good luck with that.

In 2008, a nightclub fire caused by a fireworks display in Longgang District killed 43 and injured 65. 13 people were arrested, which was presumably as much in the name of Darwinism as it was in the name of justice.

Haohao

Former hospital chief in Shenzhen pleads guilty to accepting bribes

Posted: 09/21/2012 7:00 am

After we told you in June of the arrests made at six Shenzhen hospitals of staff accused of accepting bribes, a former president of Henggang People’s Hospital has pleaded guilty to the charges, according to Shenzhen Daily.

Kong pleaded guilty at Yantian District People’s Court to accepting bribes of 2.4 million yuan on September 18, according to the paper.

Kong Deqi

Kong allegedly took bribes in exchange for hospital projects, medicine and equipment procurements and personnel appointments between 1999 and 2012, while he was president of Dapeng, Pinghu and Henggang hospitals in Longgang District.

Kong’s lawyer insisted that his client was a responsible and caring physician in spite of his crimes, and he was a caring member of society who had never seriously harmed anyone, according to Huarenwang.

According to his confession, Kong earned up to 250,000 yuan in legal income per year and expected to receive a 200,000-yuan annual pension after retirement. He could have legally earned at least 6.25 million yuan by age 80, Shenzhen Daily added.

Local media commented that he effectively lost 6.25 million yuan in order to gain 3.24 million yuan illegally. A fine doctor maybe, a mathematician no.

The mathematics of Kong’s crime, courtesy of Southern Metropolis Daily.

There are a total of nine hospital executives in Shenzhen who are still under investigation.

Haohao

Container truck crashes, causing a 28-vehicle pile-up in Shenzhen

Posted: 08/17/2012 1:00 pm

A pile-up caused by a container truck that involved 28 vehicles injured four on Shenzhen’s Nanping Expressway at 5 p.m. on Tuesday (August 14), according to local media.

Two of the injured were taken to No.3 People’s Hospital with severe wounds. Ten of the vehicles were severely damaged the Longgang District section of Nanping Expressway leading to the Bulong toll gate on the Shuiguan Expressway, according to the Shenzhen Daily.

The driver of the truck lost control and veered towards motorists who were queueing at the tollgate. Emergency services arrived within 10 minutes and sprayed the ground with water to prevent the diesel that had spilled from the truck and emptied the remaining diesel from the truck’s tank.

Although the accident caused congestion, traffic on the expressway was back to normal within three hours.

The driver was among the injured.

The accident caused a tailback

Haohao

Mutilated body found, rape suspected

Posted: 07/12/2012 1:00 pm

A body thought to be of a 37-year-old woman who was three months pregnant, Zhang Shaogai, was found one week after she was reported missing. An autopsy showed that she may have been raped. Zhang’s body was found on July 7th in a bush near the reservoir which she would walk past on her way home every day in Shenzhen’s Longgang District, local media reported.

Zhang’s husband and colleagues recognized her from the keys and slippers beside the body. According to Zhang’s younger brother, who was part of the search party, his sister’s head was covered with a red plastic bag, while her pants had been dragged down beneath her knees. However, the police said as the body was badly mutilated, test results are yet to confirm whether it was Zhang’s body and whether she had been raped.

Zhang worked as an inspector with a toy factory in Henggang’s Xikeng in the subdistrict, while her husband, Liu, is a security guard at an electronics factory in a nearby neighborhood. They live in Liu’s staff dormitory with two kids. Zhang was three months pregnant with her third child before she died.

As reported by Shenzhen Evening News, Zhang usually rode a bike home but recently, had been walking home. She disappeared June 30th, the third night she embarked on the 20-minute walk. According to Liu, her husband, Zhang’s cell phone was taken when the body was found. He suspected that the motive was robbery.

Longgang Police are investigating the case.

Zhang’s elder sister devastated after seeing the body.
Haohao

97 year-old woman locked up by her son

Posted: 06/19/2012 7:00 am

Filial piety is the fundamental basis of Chinese morality, according to scholar Joseph S Wu. But taking care of an aging population is one of society’s most pressing issues. Pension reform is being widely discussed, and People’s Daily recently published a survey as to whether the retirement age should be extended. There is also a shortage of nursing homes, creating a dilemma for many families as to how to balance busy working lives with raising children, and continuing to support elderly family members.

One extreme example of how not to treat an elderly family member was seen in Shenzhen recently.

A 97 year-old woman accused her son of locking her in a small room, giving her no access to a shower, and feeding her only a steamed bun that was too hard for her to chew. The son admitted his wrongdoing to the police and promised to treat her better in the future, according to The Southern Metropolis Daily. The woman, Cai Xueying, also said her son, surnamed Xue, pointed at her and yelled: “You don’t know shit!” When she told him she would report him to a newspaper.

Cai tearfully told the newspaper that after coming out of a retirement home in Buji, Longgang District on June 8, she was kept in the room for 6 days. When a reporter from the newspaper brought her a bowl of porridge, she was so hungry that she finished it in seconds. Photographs show the woman’s living quarters to be very basic with just a bed, a table and a lamp.

In a phone interview, Xue explained that he was on a business trip in Guangxi Province. When told that his mother was hungry, Xue said, “It’s natural to be hungry. If she’s hungry then give her something to eat,” before hanging up the phone, according to the newspaper. Xue has refused to speak to the media since.

A lawyer surnamed Huang said Xue’s behaviour amounted to maltreatment, but there is little legislation to deal with the neglectful treatment of the elderly.

Cai was born shortly after the collapse of the Qing Dynasty. She had 10 children, 5 of whom survived infancy, according to the newspaper. But for various reasons, her other children are unable to take care of her.

The story has become popular on the Internet. One Sina Weibo user said she should have disposed of him at birth. Another said the man should be punished for not appreciating how lucky he is to have a mother who lived so long.

Haohao

School bus inferno: bus carrying 20 students catches fire in Longgang, Shenzhen

Posted: 06/5/2012 7:00 am

School bus safety has been in the news in China following a series of bus crashes over the past year.  Unfortunately, things don’t seem to be getting any better.

It’s not for lack of trying, though.  In January this year, the Shenzhen government introduced rules stipulating that all school buses must be equipped with seat belts, and if a child on a school bus is found not wearing one, the driver will be fined 200 yuan (US$32). Bus owners or operators who fail to install seat belts will be fined 5000 yuan. But there are other aspects of safety they may have overlooked.

A school bus carrying 20 people caught fire at a toll booth in Shenzhen’s Longgang District on the morning of June 3, according to The Daily Sunshine. The workers at the toll booth immediately put the fire out, and the driver guided all passengers, which included 16 kindergarten students, out of the vehicle to safety. The cause is under investigation.

The incident happened at the Bulong toll booth on Shuiguan Expressway at 9:08 a.m. A toll booth worker identified as Mr Yu told The Daily Sunshine, “I couldn’t tell whether the fire was coming from the back or the front, but my colleagues and I opened the door, rushed out with the fire extinguisher and managed to put the fire out before anybody was hurt.” According to the teacher, the students were going on a school trip.

It is thought that the fire was caused by a problem with the engine. Three towels placed on the front seat of the bus were the first objects on board to catch fire. The driver used the fire extinguisher on board to put it out after guiding the passengers off the bus, and it took an estimated 30 minutes to put out the fire completely.

The driver suggested that the city force all school buses to go through safety checks every three months. The name of the kindergarten was not written on the bus. The newspaper contacted all of the kindergartens in the vicinity, but all denied that there had been an incident involving one of their buses.

This isn’t the first issue with school buses.  In December last year, 15 were killed in a school bus crash in Jiangsu Province. The accident occured only a day after the state council moved to strengthen school bus safety after a crash killed 19 kindergarten students in Gansu Province the previous month.

Haohao
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