After the Wenchuan earthquake in May 2008, large numbers of civilian volunteers and professional rescue teams from various regions joined the disaster relief effort, which is often regarded as a symbol of the rise of civil society in China.
On March 15, 2008, the inspection squad of the Zhabei Branch went to Beijing again to speak with Yang Jia. By then, five months had passed since Yang Jia's first complaint, and the Shanghai police still maintained that there had been no problem with the officers' law-enforcement actions — no apology and no compensation.
From July 2007 to March 2008, Huawei employees died by suicide one after another: on July 18, 2007, Shenzhen employee Zhang Rui hanged himself; on August 11, an employee at the Changchun office fell from a building; on February 26, 2008, Chengdu office employee Li Dongbing jumped from a building; and on March 6, an employee at the Shenzhen headquarters jumped from a building. These deaths were linked to intense work pressure.
On the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, 35 Errenzhuan actors knelt in batches at the Benshan Media base to pay respects to Zhao Benshan and his wife Ma Lijuan, performing the apprenticeship ceremony and serving tea, which sparked outside discussion about the 'enthronement' of the leader of the Benshan sect.
Since mid-2006, U.S. home prices have fallen by more than 20% on average; home equity dropped from about $13 trillion in 2006 to about $8.8 trillion in mid-2008, and the video says household net worth evaporated by about $13 trillion.
In the name of commemorating his late wife, Zhao Xicheng gave assets worth 5 million to 25 million US dollars to Zhao Xiaolan and McConnell, greatly increasing the McConnell couple's wealth.
During Wang Shi's tenure as the second president of Alxa SEE, the association experienced an incident where the secretariat unilaterally added investment funds. Ren Zhiqiang proposed impeachment, and Wang Shi publicly acknowledged his mistakes, demonstrating the association's rules' constraint on power.
After the Wenchuan earthquake, Wang Shi's suggestion that employees donate with a limit of 10 yuan sparked public criticism, Vanke's stock fell, Wang Shi was forced to apologize and make an additional donation, showing the societal pressure of supervision on public figures.
CICC held its quarterly board meeting at the Sukhothai Hotel in Bangkok, with Morgan Stanley eager to sell its stake, while the Chinese management team led by Zhu Yunlai demonstrated tough bargaining power.
Xi Yuanping married military singer Zhang Lanlan, who came from the military art troupe system. This indicates that Xi Yuanping had already been deeply involved in the network of relationships in the arts establishment and entertainment circles before 2008.
According to reports at the time, the Chinese American Association of Greater New York (and other groups) organized 150 organizations, prepared 10,000 small flags and 10,000 T-shirts, and arranged more than 90 buses to participate in the San Francisco Olympic torch relay.
In 2008, the Cristina government of Argentina nationalized private pensions, with nearly $30 billion flowing into government coffers.
North Korea opened mobile phone services in 2008, and has since gradually developed its own mobile phone user base and domestic mobile phone brands.
Citing data, the program claimed that China's cumulative infrastructure investment from 2008 to 2024 was about 120 trillion yuan, averaging roughly 9.7% of GDP per year; no public source could be found for this figure.
At the end of 2008, the national team adjusted its management measures, and players such as Li Na, Zheng Jie, Peng Shuai and Yan Zi began to arrange their own training and professional competitions, putting the "flying solo" system into practice.
Zhang Yiming joined the Chinese microblogging service Fanfou, where he was responsible for technical work including search, message distribution, trending-word mining, anti-cheating, and user ranking.
On October 22, 2007, after the First Plenary Session of the 17th CCP Central Committee, Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang were both elected to the Politburo Standing Committee. Xi Jinping ranked sixth but stood in front, and the outside world saw him as the successor to Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao.
At the 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Xi Jinping, with a narrow advantage, entered the Politburo Standing Committee along with Li Keqiang, becoming Hu Jintao's successor, while Bo Xilai only made it to the Politburo.
On October 16, 2007, the inspection squad of the Zhabei Branch went to Beijing to visit Yang Jia and his mother, Wang Jingmei. Yang Jia demanded that the police pay 10,000 yuan in compensation. The inspection squad did not agree, nor did it discipline any police officer.
After dawn on October 6, 2007, Yang Jia left the police station and took a train back to Beijing. From that day on, he repeatedly filed complaints through petition letters and emails with the Shanghai Public Security Bureau and the inspection department of the Zhabei Branch, demanding the dismissal of the officers involved, compensation for emotional distress, and reimbursement of telephone charges. After investigation, the inspection detachment of the Zhabei Branch concluded that the officers' law enforcement was not improper, and the complaint received no apology whatsoever.
On the evening of October 5, 2007, Yang Jie was sightseeing in Shanghai. Riding a rented bicycle past the intersection of Zhijiang West Road and Pushan Road in Zhabei District, he was stopped by officers from the Zhijiang West Road police station and taken into the station for questioning until the early hours of October 6. He said he was insulted and beaten inside the station, which was the starting point of his nonstop complaints over the following year.
YouTube was blocked across mainland China for the first time, and access was restored a few days later.
In 2007, Xi Jinping succeeded Zeng Qinghong as the head of the Central Leading Group on Hong Kong and Macau Affairs, serving in this position for five years until he ascended to the top leadership in 2012.
In June 2007, about 400 senior cadres held a closed-door democratic recommendation vote ahead of the 17th CCP National Congress. Reports said Xi Jinping ranked first in votes and Li Keqiang second; the results were never officially released.
On June 4, 2007, the Chengdu Evening News published a classified advertisement paying tribute to the strong mothers of the June Fourth victims, after which three editors were fired.
Jiang faction Politburo Standing Committee member Huang Ju died of cancer, dealing a heavy blow to the Jiang faction's strength.
In June 2007, Hu Jintao pushed forward a system of democratic recommendations, in which more than 400 Central Committee members and alternate members voted to select Politburo candidates from among more than 200 ministerial-level officials under the age of 63. Large numbers of Jiang Zemin faction members voted in blocs, resulting in Li Keqiang's elimination and Xi Jinping's victory, and Hu Jintao's succession plan fell through.
On May 10, 2007, a jury at the U.S. Federal Court in Santa Ana, California, found Chinese-American engineer Chi Mak guilty of conspiring to export U.S. defense technology to China and other charges, and in March 2008 he was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison.
On March 24, 2007, Xi Jinping was transferred from Secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee to Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, succeeding acting municipal Party Committee Secretary Han Zheng after the Chen Liangyu case.
The then-Secretary of the Liaoning Provincial Party Committee, Li Keqiang, told the US Ambassador that Liaoning's GDP figures were man-made and for reference only, and that he only looked at electricity consumption, railway cargo volume, and bank loans.
On January 23, 2007, the 38th collective study session of the CCP Politburo, themed on the building and management of online culture, Hu Jintao stressed strengthening the building and management of online culture.
McConnell was elected Senate Republican leader and held the position long-term.
According to reports, Zhu Yunlai's compensation at CICC in 2007 may have been as high as about $17 million (about $10 million in 2006), which was an outside estimate and not officially announced by CICC.
Ren Zhiqiang ran for the supervisor of Alxa SEE for the third time. With his image as a "public enemy" and his persistent attitude of speaking the truth, he impressed the audience and was elected chairman of the second council with a high number of votes.
After Xi Jinping took charge in Shanghai in 2007, Fang Xinghai was promoted to Deputy Secretary of the Shanghai Financial Work Party Committee.
Xi Jinping became Shanghai Party Secretary in 2007. After about seven months in the post, he moved to Beijing, becoming a key figure groomed in the Chinese Communist Party's top-level personnel arrangements.
Jing Tian was admitted to Beijing Film Academy. Sun Yuchen saw Jing Tian's advertisement for QQ on Xiaonei and tried to add her as a friend, but the request was not accepted. Sun Yuchen mentioned in his article that as early as 2007, someone had already been "burning money" for Jing Tian.
In 2007, demographer Yi Fuxian published Big Country, Empty Nest, arguing that China's population data was falsified and that family planning should be abolished; he was subsequently banned and went into exile overseas.
In a 2007 case in Nanjing in which a person helped an elderly person who had fallen to the ground, the judge ordered the helper to pay compensation on the grounds that "if you didn't bump into him, why did you go and help him," and the ruling sparked nationwide discussion about extortion targeting those who act courageously to help others.
Eight days after Du Shicheng's incident, his relative Du Xishan resigned from all positions at Qingdao Golden Coast Hotel Co., Ltd.
In October 2006, Li Wei was taken into police custody on suspicion of evading tax payments; she was reportedly close to Chen Tonghai, then chairman of Sinopec.
In October 2006, the Pengyu case occurred in Nanjing. The court of first instance ordered the young man who had helped an elderly person who fell to compensate the plaintiff. The reasoning in the judgment and the subsequent handling sparked a long-running nationwide controversy over trust and mutual assistance among strangers.
On September 24, 2006, the CCP Central Committee decided to remove Chen Liangyu from his posts as Secretary of the CCP Shanghai Municipal Committee and others, and to place him under investigation, on suspicion of misappropriating Shanghai social security fund investments.
Overseas investigators, calling on behalf of an embassy, questioned Bo Xilai by telephone about the forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners during his tenure in Liaoning, and Bo Xilai implicated Jiang Zemin in the conversation.
The "Zhi Jiang Xin Yu" column of Zhejiang Daily published an article titled "Integrating Dialectics into Every Business Opportunity," which explains the meaning of "inexplicable" (mo ming qi miao).
The CCP Central Commission for Discipline Inspection began a thorough investigation into Shanghai's social security system, paving the way for a subsequent investigation into Chen Liangyu.
During a research symposium in Yiwu, then-Zhejiang Party Secretary Xi Jinping summarized the commercial rise of Yiwu as 'inexplicable,' 'creating something from nothing,' and 'turning stones into gold.'
In May 2006, Li Wei, through Huang Songyou, Yang Xiancai and others, signed a contract in the name of Sinopec with a company under Guo Cheng, buying the North Tower of Zhongcheng Plaza in Guangzhou for more than 1.3 billion yuan; the building was sealed up over debt disputes after its completion in 1996.
On April 28, 2006, 24-year-old graduate student Hu Xinyu, during a critical Huawei project push, worked until 3 a.m. every day for a long stretch, going home only 4 times in 30 days. He collapsed at the office, was diagnosed with acute meningitis, and died 10 days after being hospitalized. Huawei subsequently hired internet commenters to post articles and published pieces such as "Heaven Rewards Diligence" to promote a culture of struggle, suppressing the incident.
Before his research trip to Yiwu in March 2006, Xi Jinping once used the term "inexplicable" to describe Yiwu's development.