(Bam Bam waving good-bye?)

The North Korean English-language blogosphere reported last week on the recent “significant breakthroughs” in US-North Korea relations. Brisk mentions were made of how these recent developments might be the final shove that topples North Korea from its illogical isolationist perch.

Articles and blogs were quick to bolster their strongly-worded arguments and sentiments with proof of recent events taking place along the peninsula over the past several months, events these bloggers and pundits claim prove conclusively that the time is ripe for a vigorous push by the US and South Korea to bring North Korea to heel and lure it once and for all into the international fold.

With Bam Bam’s condition weakening by the day and his restive population subsisting on a spartan diet of poor-quality foodstuffs — northern refugees to the South claim that starvation rations persist in certain parts of DPRK — North Korea, yet again, is decimating itself from within.

Basically, say these bloggers, journalists, and pundits, this may spell the end of North Korea as we know it…

What Are Those “Recent North Korean Developments” — A Review:

Plenty of stuff’s been happening since May 2009, to wit…

• The nuclear tests of May of that year: This was the event which kickstarted North Korea’s year-long-plus downward spiral into the mire. Last time Bam Bam issued the order to detonate something was way back in October 2006, and, of course, he apologized profusely for having done so, claiming that he’d be perfectly willing to make a few compromises, if only the US would make some key compromises first. Same old story. Same old outcome.
• November 2009′s release of the captive US journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee: the pair were released from North Korean captivity on August 4, 2009 following Former President Clinton’s whirlwind 2-day emergency intervention tour to Pyongyang. This too represented something of an opening. A willingness – in North Korean newspeak and gesturespeak — on the part of Pyongyang to deal with the West. It basically amounted to nothing. Two additional American missionaries still remain in North Korean custody, incidentally. They don’t have nearly the clout or influence of Ling and Lee.
• November 2009′s dramatic currency devaluation: Whole fortunes were wiped out in November 2009 at the stroke of a pen as the NK won was redenominated by a factor of 100. This was allegedly enacted in order to curtail the spate of private marketeering and other entrepreneurial activity that had sprouted up in recent years across DPRK, reluctantly tolerated by the regime. Kim and his hapless cronies (one of whom — Pak Nam-gi was subsequently put to death in March 2010 for the economic chaos which ensued) were basically looking to stick it to the rising NK moneyed class just to remind them who’s really in charge. The re-evaluation slammed North Korea’s already ailing destitute classes hardest.
• March 2010′s sinking of the corvette Cheonan: Then there was the sinking of the South Korean navy ship Cheonan, the blame for which a UN-sponsored commission of inquiry — with US, Australian, and Swedish participation — initially laid squarely on Pyongyang’s shoulders, only to later backpedal during the Security Council’s issuing of its toothless “presidential statement.” It merely alluded to North Korea’s involvement, using the diplomatically-chosen words that it “Takes Note of Neighbour’s Response Denying Responsibility for Sinking” — the “Neighbour” of course being DPRK. This has had repercussions all around the region as first China was obviously unwilling to point the finger at its erstwhile ally, and then Russia — conducting its own independent inquiry — also joined the chorus of doubters as to who was responsible for the action. In the latter case, economics seems to be the clear motivating factor.
• Kim Jong-il’s “Secret” May 2010 trip to China: We’re left wondering what this meeting entai led? What did Kim talk about with Chinese President Hu Jintao? Did Kim travel to Beijing to receive instructions from the Chinese on how best to deal with the US in the wake of the Cheonan‘s sinking? Was he called out onto the mat to explain his country’s apparent belligerence? Was he given strict succession instructions from the Chinese? Did Hu promise to look after the heir apparent Kim Jong-un once Bam Bam was good and gone, to ensure that the Americans wouldn’t have their way with him? Here, here, and here are several possible scenarios…
• World Cup 2010: Following an impressive 2-1 stonewalling the mighty Brazilians (in which NK lost honorably), the country’s squad went on to get annihilated in its second game — 7-0 — against the Portuguese and then lost convincingly — 3-0 — against the Ivoreans to bow out of the tournament’s Round of 32. Were North Korea to have done well at the tournament, it might have generated a whole mass of goodwill. But it wasn’t to be.
• June 2010′s willingness to talk…again: North Korea announced its willingness last month to join a UN-sponsored forum to “discuss” its chronic domestic health problems, all under US auspices. Why this was significant was because the US refused to place NK on the list of terrorist-sponsoring states a second time following the country’s October 11, 2008 removal from that same list. The White House is very reluctant to add NK back for two primary reasons: a) blame for the Cheonan‘s sinking is not conclusive, ergo, it isn’t NK’s direct fault for certain, and b) China is totally against an escalation of hostilities on the peninsula whatsoever, and the Obama Administration isn’t going down that rabbit hole, for now.
• Calls to boot NK out of the United Nations: Certain pundits, namely journalist-in-residence Claudia Rosett of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, recently listed the litany of ways in which Kim Jong-il’s regime has violated the various sacred tenets of the UN Charter, He, therefore, she claims, has abrogated North Korea’s sovereign right to remain a member of the weak-kneed international body as a result. Rosett’s opinion perhaps remains a minority one for now, but as this rumor picks up velocity in the echo chamber, look to have more pundits and journalists calling for Kim’s head on a silver platter. It’s a well-written piece with a cogent argument and I fully recommend the read.
• Possible Ressurrection of the North-South Sunshine Policy? Ever since South Korea forbade its citizens from visiting North Korea’s Kumgang resort following July 11, 2009′s shooting of a 53 year-old female ROK tourist in so-called “no-man’s land,” the Sunshine Policy of the early naughts has been — for all intents and purposes — moribund. However, a recent Christian Science Monitor article (nice going Douglas Kirk!) suggests movements are underway in South Korea to involve the Chinese in a revitalized “sunshine-esque policy” that may coax NK back to the bargaining table. We’ll see…
• Will Kim Jong-un nominally take over in September 2010? The Korean Workers Party (KWP) Congress set for this September promises to be “historical.” It’s expected that Bam Bam will take the opportunity here to formally announce to the rest of the nation and the world that his son is to become the country’s next hereditary leader. Jong-un will likely be awarded with increased security responsibilities and a rash of public face time, yet even the experts are unsure what may become of him. If the military doesn’t stand behind him — as evidenced by the Cheonan‘s mysterious sinking — there may be more than just a palace coup come September.

So what now?

Following November 2009′s currency devaluation, North Koreans are once again starving.Food — and money to buy it — is scarce again, and the regime is getting ultra nervous.

Around two million (!!!) people died — according to certain statistics — during the mid-1990′s famine following the end of Soviet-sponsorship on the Kim Farm. North Koreans aren’t going to tolerate yet another famine now that its society is increasingly savvy to what’s happening outside of the DPRK’s borders, especially along the border regions with China and the Russian Federation, thanks to mobile phones and traffic around the Tumen and Yalu crossings.

Bam Bam’s bombastic sloganeering and the regime’s overall attempts to mollify the populace aren’t going to work a second time.

(NK propaganda about the Cheonan?)

This likely explains why Bam Bam has escalated his son’s succession to the super fast track.

This also likely explains the recent spate of postering in Pyongyang (as shown above) depicting a possible retaliation against a “Cheonan“-like ship (“If she comes, we will attack it!” it says) in order supply more distracting belligerent fodder for a population finding itself at wit’s end.

There are even some North Koreans who crave a second round of warfare, just to put a decisive end, once and for all, to their miserable living conditions vis-a-vis the South.

If something suddenly happens, you’ll be the first to know here.

North Koreans plan, Bam Bam laughs.



This article appeared originally at North Korea Blues

We have indeed gone together, during these two years. While thankful to our commenters and especially my fellow writers, I thought it would be worth sending link-love to the top 20 blogs that have linked to us and sent traffic our way.  In our peripatetic musings these past 2 years, they have offered us intellectual bread and water, gave us shelter, protected us from evil trolls, and otherwise kept us on our odyssey. Now if only we knew where we were going…

Thanks:

• EastSouthWestNorth (url: zonaeuropa.com) by Roland Soong – See Roland’s CNBloggerCon 2009 post on “Is Dialogue Possible?” and his 2008 CNBloggerCon prepared remarks.  Roland, we are fellow travelers on your journey to encourage East-West (and Mainland, HK, Taiwan) dialogue. Will Roland ever provide RSS feeds to all sections?  Time will tell.  Twitter: @eswn
• China Law Blog (CLB) by Dan Harris – Never thought I’d find a “law” blog interesting, but like a good lawyer, CLB goes beyond the law to highlight topics on China business and society that help those who do business in China or with Chinese partners.  In one sentence, I’d say CLB is about “sh1t that goes down in China and how you can avoid it.”  Consequently, this is an important blog to read! Twitter: @danharris
• chinaSMACK – IMHO, the launch of chinaSMACK is the most important event that has happened in the world of English-language China blogs in the last two years–who else new has expanded audience to English-language China blogs?  Why read something that resembles the college course on China you slept through, when you can indulge your inner voyeur by reading hot, viral stories in translation?  If you’re feeling 很黄很暴力 (hen huang hen baoli, very yellow very violent) come to chinaSMACK.  Then go to ChinaHush, who has gone beyond imitation to becoming a pitch-perfect complement (nice work, Key) to Fauna’s SMACK and in some ways even more interesting.  Fauna, when am I going to see more than 1/2 of your face?  You tantalize.  Twitter: @chinasmack
• Danwei (Chinese mirror Danwei.tv) – Sometimes a bit erudite for my techy, petty bourgeois tastes, Joel Martinsen, Alice Xin Liu, Eric Mu, and Jeremy Goldkorn do great work in bringing China to the world.  Too bad all the thanks they get is a nice URL block from the Net Nanny.  Lessons from observing Xu Zhiyong and Jeremy: no good deed goes unpunished in China.  Twitter: @danwei, @axliu, @goldkorn
• ChinaOnTV – Wasn’t expecting to see ChinaOnTV in our stats, but we had partnered with them to put together some interviews around May 2008. I also think they have a bug generating traffic in our direction!  Thanks for working with us, Johnson Q and Thalia! Twitter: @chinaontv
• China.Alltop.com – OK, its an 1-page China blog aggregator.  But we’ve been honored with above-the-fold linkage since the inception of the page.  So thanks Guy Kawasaki, Neenz Faleafine, and Christine Lu for your trust in us.  Twitter: @neenz, @christinelu, @guykawasaki
• The Peking Duck – Richard Burger’s blend of political, economic and social commentary is is many ways the archetypal China bridge blog.  Richard, I’ve learned a lot from you, and from the battle royale that often happens in your commentstream.  Twitter: @thepekingduck
• Shanghaiist – When we talk about what we want to be when we grow up, Shanghaiist often comes up. Elaine Chow, Cary Hooper, Kenneth Tan, and contributors, thanks.  Twitter: @shanghailaine, @shanghaiist, @singaporeano, @CaryHooper
• Fools Mountain -  The Yin to Peking Duck’s Yang, Fools Mountain contains political, cultural, social and economic commentary that some would consider to be largely “pro-China.”  Instead of the archetypal Western (mostly-male) blogger in China, Fools Mountain is mostly people (apparently mostly-male) of Chinese heritage living in the West.  Its an important blog that also has a very active commenter community.  Kudos to you:  Admin, BXBQ, Tang Buxi, and the rest of the blogging team.  Twitter: ????
• Wangjianshuo – I consider Jianshuo to be one of my blogging mentors, and have enjoyed following his blog since about 2005.  My original desire was to build CN Reviews into a blog community of both native English speakers and native Chinese speakers like Wang Jianshuo who blog in English.  But with 338 million Intenet users, there appears to be only one (or maybe a small handful) of Wangjianshuo’s.   Anyway, many thanks for your encouragement and your friendship.  Twitter: @jianshuo
• Wall Street Journal China Real Time Report – The China Real Time Report nee China Journal is probably the best China business blog run by a mainstream media outlet.  The Wall Street Journal also has some of the best overall China coverage out there.  Folks I follow online and in print:  Andrew Batson, Sky Canaves, Loretta Chao, Ian Johnson, Shai Oster, Juliet Ye. Twitter: @ChinaRealTime,  @WSJChina, @skycita, @AndrewBatson
• ChinaGeeks – We’ve already made clear our bromatic feelings for fellow blogger Charles Custer, of China Geeks, and his compadre Chris Hearne.  ChinaGeeks is the up-and-coming commentary blog of the China blogosphere.  Charter 08, Racism in China, Hu Yaobang, Ai Weiwei, May Fouth, Gaokao in translation, Chinese patriotism…I especially appreciated your perspective in the month prior to the 20th anniversary of the TAM incident.
• Global Voices Online China – GVO just turned five…congratulations!  Read their story over at co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon’s blog RConversation or over at Global Voices itself.  Some folks that have done good work at GVO China: Bob Chen, Oiwan Lam, John Kennedy, and many newer contributors that I’m not that familiar with.
• China Digital Times (CDT) – Led by Sophia Beach and Xiao Qiang, CDT is an aggregator blog that covers a broad range of social and political topics about China. Twitter: @CDTimes, @CDT
• James Fallows – He’s provided a nuanced perspective on China to Western audiences.  I especially appreciated his series on Gaokao that gave me some insights into the Chinese educational system.  I also appreciated his perspective on Chinese diversity, individualism, internal political competition within the Party, relative openness of the Chinese economy in contrast to other East Asian economies, etc. in this Aspen Ideas Festival exchange between him and Chimerica-fearmongering, castle-owning Niall Ferguson (video).  Honestly, I am trying to get through Niall’s arrogant style to get to the substance of his argument, which is worthy of some consideration.
• Time’s China Blog -  This blog shut down 9/18 (see Simon Elegant’s farewell post with comments replete with haters and spam).  Thanks for your support.  Twitter: @austinramzy
• Lost Laowai (LLW) – Mostly the brainchild of Ryan McLaughlin, LLW is a group blog serving the expat community in China.  Thanks, Ryan! Twitter: @lostlaowai, @thehumanaught
• GraniteStudio – Jeremiah, thanks for including us in your 以文會友 list!  GraniteStudio is wide-ranging and provides a historical perspective to current events.  Twitter: @GraniteStudio
• Imagethief – Will Moss brings humor, good-hearted irreverance and general interestingness to the often heavy topic of US-China relations and mainstream media gaffes on both sides of the Pacific.  Twitter: @imagethief
• Ifgogo.com – Guo Qirui (aka Aw Guo, or Awflasher) started this group blog to encourage Chinese to blog in English.  Over the years, I’ve become friends with several authors:  Lisa Lee, Cat Chen, and Aw himself.  I wish there were more Chinese bloggers Twitter: @awflasher, @CatChen

Thanks!

Gansu Expressway photo courtesy: Chinadaily BBS

I love British people or, rather, I love British humor…which is a little ironic since I seem to get a disproportionate amount of British people who hate me and stalk me around the China blogs I frequently comment on, itching to flame me for something or another. Paul Carr, former columnist for The Guardian and a weekly writer on staff for top-tech-blog TechCrunch, is one of those British people with the British wit I so very much love, and is definitely one of my favorite reads each week.

This week, Mr. Carr takes to task Brazilians and Americans in a post aptly titled, “WITN?: Brazil nuts, American idiots and whoever else I have to upset around here to keep my job“. In short, he bitingly ridicules the Brazilians who took offense a complaint by fellow TechCrunch writer Sarah Lacy (whom we’ve mentioned before here on CNR) over Brazil repeatedly failing to deliver her approved visa, the visa she needs to travel to the country and do research and reporting on Brazil’s tech start-up industry. He also castigates Americans for their general paranoia regarding the safety of foreign countries, albeit somewhat vindicating the premise with an undeniably true observation. He says a lot more, dressing the entire post with layers upon layers of multi-faceted, humorous, even poignant points.

TechCrunch is, of course, not a blog about China and Mr. Carr’s post is not a post about China. However, in the spirit of being mindful of ourselves before being too mindful of others that I like to bludgeon CNR readers with, I felt his post was both tangentially relevant enough and entertaining enough to link to here.

It is difficult to appreciate Mr. Carr’s humor without reading in the context of his entire post, but here’s an excerpt containing the above quote:

So if it wasn’t the visa issue, or the flag, really the only justification I could find for the Brazilian commenters’ rage was Sarah’s remark that her husband was worried about her traveling to the country due its reputation for violence.

This is of course typical American paranoia of all points foreign. “The natives are savages! We won’t be able to walk the streets in safety!” they whine, in a hideously unfair characterisation of a gentle, welcoming people. No wonder some Brazilians were upset with Sarah, to the point where they posted comments threatening to spit in her face and rape her.

Don’t miss the rest of the hilarity by reading the entire post over at TechCrunch »

UPDATE – 9/1 ~00:30 am Beijing time:  I received a tweet from Keso that showed that he was unblocked.  He wrote:

感谢所有对我的Twitter帐号被挂起表示关心、支持和帮助的朋友，谢谢你们！特别感谢CNReviews的 @elliottng.

Yesterday morning, I saw in Twitter (via @msittig) that famous tech blogger Keso had been blocked–not by the Chinese government–but by Silicon Valley startup company, Twitter.   As one of the most prominent IT bloggers in China, you would think that his suspension would be quickly investigated by Twitter and then reversed.  But as of the time of this post, his account is still suspended, nearly 48 hours later.

Consider this:  Twitter blocks China’s equivalent of Robert Scoble (a popular, pioneering tech blogger).  Forty-eight hours go by and nothing happens.  Do you think that would happen if it were actually Robert Scoble?

I conducted an email interview with Keso to get his thoughts on this matter.   Chinese bloggers are so used to inconvenience and outages, he answered my questions in a calm, cool, and collected way.  (We’re still working on the translation, this is very rough).

1.  When did your account get Suspended by Twitter?

我发现我的Twitter帐号被suspended，是在北京时间8月27日凌晨2点钟左右。在我的帐号被suspend之前几个小时，我刚刚启用了一个第三方应用——Twitter Gadget for Gmail。你知道，Twitter在中国已经被屏蔽将近3个月，中国大陆用户访问Twitter非常困难，他们不得不通过一些第三方应用，以及Tor、VPN等方式，间接访问Twitter。我怀疑——仅仅是怀疑——我的帐号suspended可能跟Twitter Gadget for Gmail有关系。

2.  How many followers did you have?  how many updates?  how long have you been using Twitter?

Until my account was suspended, I had 8000+ followers, 498 tweets. I opened my Twitter account on Jan 30, 2007.

3.  Most people in the US may not have heard of you.  Who are you?  What do you blog about?  How many readers do you have (e.g. monthly visitors/page views, RSS subscribers, etc)?

First and foremost, I am a blogger.  I am also an Internect consultant/advisor with a number of Internet startups.   The number of my blog readers is not able to be measured accuratly,  because many articles are reproduced/reposted onto many different sites, such as Sina News.   In addition, many portals have set up mirror sites of my blog.  As long as I update my blog,  editors from portals will manaully update the “mirrored” blogs on the portals.  According to FeedBurner statistics, my feed subscription number 171,526. But this number does not include the subscription via some sites such as Douban 9 O’clock (9.douban.com) because  they are using another feed which is not able to be measured.

我首先是一名blogger，其次我是一名互联网咨询顾问，为一些互联网startups提供咨询服务。我的blog无法统计具体的读者数量，因为很多文章会被转载到不同的网站，比如新浪新闻，另外，很多门户网站也开设了我的blog镜像，只要我有更新，这些网站的编辑就会人工更新我的镜像blog。根据FeedBurner的统计，我的feed订阅数为171,526。不过这个数字并不包括通过豆瓣九点（9.douban.com）等网站上的订阅，因为这些网站使用的是无法被统计的另一个feed。

4. Your blog content is copied to BBS and also at mirror blogs at the major portals.  Is this done with your permission?  What do you think is the difference between how blog content is reused in China vs. the English-speaking world?

Some of the mirror blogs are set up with my agreement, while others are set up without my permission.  I can only sigh, but can’t do anything about it. A few years ago I wrote an article about this situation : Why not Link other than Repost.  But simply copying blogs without links back is still the most common kind of behavior in China, as each site wants to build its own private garden.  Here, there are a lot of people claim to be “open”, but their “open” may be often false or very limited.   As long as being a closed, private garden can bring greater benefit, these sites will refuse to open up. In China, the big Internet companies, such as Tencent, Sina, Baidu, etc. have generally been building up private gardens.  They are typically bad [at link attribution & being open.]

有些镜像blog是经过我同意的，有些则是他们自己擅自开设的，对此我只能叹气，却无能为力。几年前我曾经写过一篇文章《与其转载，不如链接》（http://blog.donews.com/keso/archive/2005/11/15/627033.aspx）， 不过看上去转载仍然是中国互联网上最常见的一种行为，每个网站都想构建自己的私家花园。在这里，也有很多人说“开放”，但这里的开放，常常是虚假的，或者 非常有限的，只要封闭能够带来更大的利益，他们就会拒绝开放。在中国，那些大的互联网公司，比如腾讯、新浪、百度等，一直都在构建私家花园，他们都是很坏 的典型。

5.  Someone on Twitter (@msittig) read that you were moving over to Sina’s microblogging service.  Is that true?  What is that service?

Sina Micro-Blog is a service similar to Twitter, and is currently in internal testing phase.  Sina has successfully invited China’s celebrity bloggers to set up on their blog platform, and I expect that Sina Micro-Blog will adopt the same operating strategy, focused on the development of the relationship between celebrities and fans. I was invited to try the product by Sina.  As long as my Twitter account restored, I will still use Twitter, because Twitter has become an important channel for me to access more information.

新浪微博是一个类似Twitter的服务，目前还处于内部测试阶段。新浪曾经成功地邀请中国的名人开设blog，我估计新浪微博也会采取相同的运营策略，着重发展名人与fans的关系。我是受新浪邀请试用该产品，谈不上moving。只要我的Twitter帐号恢复，我仍然会用Twitter，因为Twitter已经成为我获取信息的一个重要渠道.

6.  Ironically, you just blogged about Twitter and microblogging before getting suspended. Do you think the microblogging model will be successful in China?  It seems that there have been Twitter clones for year (Zuosa, Fanfou) and none have been that successful.  Does QQ satisfy most people’s need for “microblogging” in some way?  Who else besides Sina might want to launch a microblogging service?

ChinaGeeks‘ Charles Custer sarcastically agrees with the allegation of Chinese President Hu Jintao being “the new Hitler” over censorship in the Chinese version of the popular World of Warcraft game:

Why does the Chinese government mandate the censorship of skeletons in WoW?

The English language internet is pretty useless in providing an answer. Most news articles and blogs quote the same vague “harmonious internet” nonsense that gets spouted for most of China’s digital censorship, and English-language bloggers and journalists seem to be content to just assume the real reason is that Hu Jintao is the new Hitler (because truly, censoring a video game and orchestrating the mass murder of eleven million people is totally the same) or that there isn’t any good reason.

Read Custer’s full post here »

Alec Ash of lime green 6 ruminates over how the over 1000 hours of compulsory “Political Thought” classes Chinese students take from elementary school to college could be better spent:

Anyway you tot that first set of numbers up, it comes to comfortably over a thousand hours by the time a Chinese student graduates from university. A thousand! Think of how a student could spend that time instead:

1) He could watch 666 episodes of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ on Youku.com and wonder at how much sex doctors have with their colleagues in American hospitals.

2) He could eat 7,347 packs of instant noodles.

3) He could mine 89,558,324 gold in World of Warcraft.

4) He could … oh I don’t know … study something else? Like Adam Smith! And the founding fathers of America! (Kidding.)

I will not be so cocky as to call this time wasted, but you all know I’m thinking it.

Read Alec’s complete post »

Before I get to the star attendees, I do want to say a few more words about BCB: Great cozy location, great microbrews (try the one with the gold medal…er, because it won a gold medal), great food, and great for Western expats that has been in China long enough to long for some good brews and modern American food. I say that last bit because you new arrivals should really TRY to integrate a bit more before crutching it to BCB.

The Shanghai bloggers that attended the “Shanghai Blogger Summit” organized by Adam Minter of Shanghai Scrap fame included:

• Richard Brubaker of All Roads Lead To China,
• Elaine Chow of Shanghaiist,
• Charlie McElwee – China Environmental Law,
• Malcome Moore – Telegraph Blogs,
• Micah Sittig of ShanghaiExpat Public Transportation Blog,
• Edna Zhou also of Shanghaiist, and…
• your’s truly.

For this week’s Weekly Review, I’d like to highlight these individuals with a sample from the past week of the great writing, reporting, and commentary that come from them, all of which are related to China and useful towards a better understanding of just what the hell is going on around these parts:

Richard Brubaker: Rudd Proves Theory. China Cannot Win.

A lot of coverage recently has once again thrown China (the prosecutor) into the spotlight for charging Rio Tinto’s GM and 3 employees (The Innocents) with espionage. It is a situation that has gradually escalated from a period of concern (when no one knew what happened to the executives) to this recent statement from Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd:

[...]

Essentially, Kevin Rudd has threatened economic sanctions should the executives not be treated fairly (i.e. released ASAP).

From the viewpoint of China, it is quickly becoming yet another media storm that they are in fear of loosing control over. AGAIN.

That, regardless of whether or not they are arresting executives at MULTIPLE Chinese firms as well for being apart of the same crime, their own foreign ministry is having to put out a fire that is moving faster than a brush fire. A storm only picking up in intensity as Commerce Secretary Locke has also publicly stated his concerns, and intention to discuss the issue.

Were China not consistently being chided for its corruption, then perhaps I would be a bit more understanding or apathetic to the Australian side, but I cannot.

China has been a punching bag for many over the years for commercial and political corruption, and now that “one of their own” has been caught up in it, the tables are turned. That now China is being too heavy handed, is risking economic ties, and that everyone in China should beware.

Yet nothing could be further from the truth.

Elaine Chow: China India War in 2012? We say not likely.

So admittedly we’re not an expert in India-China relations, but last we checked, they weren’t exactly sour. Sure, we’re not best buddy-buds with our neighbors to the South, but we seem to back each other up a lot on certain issues (like climate change).

According to one Indian analyst though, we’re poised to attack them by 2012. Bharat Verma, editor of the Indian Defense Review, told the Indian Economic Times that “there are multiple reasons for a desperate Beijing to teach India the final lesson, thereby ensuring Chinese supremacy in Asia in this century.”

He listed a couple of points that outlined why we would ever engage in such a useless, costly, and geopolitically upsetting move:

• Pakistan is not doing well in its fight against India, and this matters to us because China “controls” Pakistan.
• India is totally allying with the US and the West, and China’s scared about that because “the alliance has the potential to create a technologically superior counterpoise.”
• There is unprecedented internal social unrest thanks to the economic slowdown and China will deal with it by diverting troops away from where the social unrest is happening and into a country it has yet to find beef with.

Okay, so maybe you’re getting that we think Bharat’s a little bonkers (we’re not the only ones). Really though, a war with India seems like the last thing China would want at this stage, especially since it seems more content to temper relations by becoming economically necessary to the country its rivaling. Besides, (as Verma admits) India would be pretty screwed if a war really happened.

Charlie McElwee: Litter Bugs

Littering is endemic in China.  We made the mistake of visiting the Great Wall during the height of Spring Festival: it goes without saying the top of the wall was a sea of people, but a glance over the side revealed a sea of debris and steady barrage of plastic bottles, wadded food wrappers, and children’s excrement (gathered in various media) being hurled at some unseen invader on the slopes below.

In urban areas, armies of paid street sweepers attend to this phenomenon with their twig brooms. It is in rural areas where litter becomes more of a problem, as no one bothers to remove garbage without residual value. Much of the waste will make its way into streams and rivers.  China Daily ran a story today about how the Kuzhu river “near World Heritage site Zhangjiajie National Forest Park” in Hunan Province “is being polluted by thousands of tons of waste being dumped directly into the river.”

Locals blame the increased trash on the rise of tourism.  This could well be the case if our Great Wall experience was any indication.  The solution?

Adam Minter: A US Expo 2010 pavilion, after all.

I’ve been following the mostly sad saga of the US pavilion for several months now, both on Shanghai Scrap, and elsewhere. And, until two weeks ago, there was absolutely no reason to believe that a participation agreement would ever be signed. Shanghai Expo, Inc., a non-profit authorized by the US State Department to fund-raise, design, build, and operate a US pavilion, had failed to raise sufficient funds to break ground. At yesterday’s signing ceremony, Beatrice Camp, the US Consul General in Shanghai blamed the underwhelming fundraising on the global economic crisis – a point that was picked up by the Chinese media. No doubt, the economic crisis played a role, but as Camp and others close to the US effort surely know, the other important factor was the inexperienced and increasingly erratic trio running the non-profit Shanghai Expo, Inc. As recently as last month, one of its members – Frank Lavin, a former US ambassador to Singapore and Undersecretary of Commerce – issued a press release falsely claiming that the US Congress had “adopted” a resolution in support of the US pavilion. This incident, and others like it, succeeded in alienating potential donors (including major US corporations with operations in China), vast swaths of the US expatriate business community in Shanghai, and – most crucially – members of the Shanghai government. For those of us following the events, the question was no longer “How badly will the US damage its relationship with China if it doesn’t participate?” but instead became “What’s worse for US-China relations? Turning down Shanghai’s Expo invite or continuing the current, incompetent effort?”

Malcome Moore: Journalists in China get death threats

Now I know that only a tiny, if vocal, number of people send death threats and attack Western media “bias” across the internet.

But a distrust of foreign reporters has seeped into the general population. Reporters working in China in the 1990s say that people were far more open and willing to talk. Now they feel that if they open their mouths, their words will be twisted.

In short, the propaganda has worked. Since 1991, when the Patriotic Education Campaign was launched, Chinese kids have been taught a narrative about how Western forces, bent on colonisation, have historically humiliated China. (You can argue that kids in Britain also get taught a skewed and patriotic history, but at the same time, they get taught to question their teachers.)

The 1999 Nato bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, in which three Chinese died, and, more recently, the attacks on the Chinese Olympic torch parade in Europe and America, have fed into that narrative.

And this has helped pave the way for the giant leap of logic that trivial mistakes, such as a skewed caption on a newspaper photograph, are “proof” of a continuing Western ambition to “get” China.

Edna Zhou: Legalized prostitution in Taiwan stirring debate

Recently, after pressure from sex workers for protection rights, the government in Taiwan has taken steps toward legalizing prostitution. In six months’ time, sex workers in Taiwan will no longer be prosecuted for their trade, and a red-light district may be set up in the capital, Taipei. While it is obviously controversial, we thought we would take a look at the debate for decriminalized prostitution, and what legislation in our neighbor across the strait might mean for us mainlanders.

Taiwan outlawed prostitution 11 years ago, yet The Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters, a Taipei-based advocacy group, estimates that 600,000 people work in sex-related jobs under the guise of ‘tea houses’ and ‘massage parlors’.

Under current law, prostitutes have to pay either a 30,000 TWD fine or spend three days in detention if arrested, while their clients walk away unscathed. The new initiatives in Taiwan would help protect prostitutes from both their customers and the police.

Naturally, it was a lot of fun meeting these people, putting faces to the names I’ve read and heard so much about. After all, we do share a common interest in chronicling our experiences and perspectives of China in written form. What you can’t always derive from writing, however, is getting to know people as they are in “real” life. They were a great bunch of people.

Now, I wasn’t taking any notes or meeting minutes or anything but for posterity I did want to share some of the topics we all talked about and, albeit often a bit cynically, laughed about:

1. The “Shanghai Blogger Summit” as manifestation of our inferiority complex to Beijing bloggers who all know and meet up with each other far more actively.
2. Blocked blogs, notably Danwei.
3. James Fallows and the problem of us incestuous China bloggers writing to ourselves, our in-country audience, and not to audiences abroad who more often than not simply do not know what we know and take for granted.
4. Green Tours, Red Tours, and where Hu Yaobang is buried.
5. Chinese university students who know about 6/4.
6. Environmentally damaged land in China.
7. Factories and businesses with frightening labor and safety standards.
8. Journalists staying in dodging “three-star” China accommodations with scandalous artwork.
9. Co-owner of Boxing Car Brewery Gary Heyne‘s involvement in bringing brew water to Iraq.
10. Quickly deteriorating former Olympic venues in China and Athens.
11. The forehead-slapping glut of Beijing commercial real estate.
12. Improving freedom of movement and reporting for journalists in China.
13. Africans protesting, and why we heard about it.
14. Visas and the unlikelihood of getting deported from China these days.
15. How blogging has or hasn’t helped people with their business.
16. Uigurs.
17. The Chinese government’s proclivity for doing things in the worst possible way (mostly PR-wise).
18. Marks & Spencer’s opening in Shanghai.
19. Malcome Moore getting abused by British expats on his blog for giving Marks & Spencer’s Shanghai store a bad review.
20. People falling to their doom in Marks & Spencer.
21. Experiences with United States Consul General Beatrice Camp.
22. Summer Camp.
23. Malcome Moore getting abused on his blog in general.
24. Weird names Chinese people name themselves (i.e. Three Hundred, Snake, Zero, Cocaine, and Creamy).
25. Harrowing airplane experiences (i.e. aborted landings and engines exploding into flames mid-flight).

Did I miss anything?

Wait…uh…is any of this going to incriminate any of us?

Characteristic of her witty self, Shanghaiist Editor Elaine Chow drops a final a-bomb insult after expressing her serious doubts of the looming 2012 China-India war postulated by Indian analyst Bharat Verma to the Indian Economic Times:

He listed a couple of points that outlined why we would ever engage in such a useless, costly, and geopolitically upsetting move:

• Pakistan is not doing well in its fight against India, and this matters to us because China “controls” Pakistan.
• India is totally allying with the US and the West, and China’s scared about that because “the alliance has the potential to create a technologically superior counterpoise.”
• There is unprecedented internal social unrest thanks to the economic slowdown and China will deal with it by diverting troops away from where the social unrest is happening and into a country it has yet to find beef with.

The quoted insult above, of course, was actually in reference to the recent Indian Bollywood movie, Chadni Chowk to China (watch with Chinese subtitles):

[M]aybe Hu Jintao will watch Chadni Chowk to China, get annoyed by how stupid a movie it is, and decide India deserves to be punished for it.

Hey, it seems just as possible. It was a pretty stupid movie. Come on, those yellow Kill Bill outfits? Really? That part took place in Japan, assholes.

I might be going out on a limb here, but didn’t Quentin Tarantino get Uma Thurman’s yellow outfit from Bruce Lee’s Game of Death?

Alex Hofford is the British photojournalist who captured the interesting pictures you see here. Each of them come from a different category of images featured in his portfolio on the web at  www.alexhoffordphotography.com.

As one would expect from a former snooty imperialist Brit, Sir Hofford Alex operates mostly out of Hong Kong. However, his work has taken him around around China (and beyond), much of which have been published in obscure publications such as The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Guardian, The Observer, and Time Magazine.

We don’t expect you to be familiar with such publications, so we’re throwing up a few samples of his work to lure you over to his blog to check out hundreds (if not thousands) of beautiful peeks into life in China spanning a broad spectrum of subject matter ranging from the environment, industry, and the usual socio-political issues.

China’s oh-so-scary security forces, apparently taking a break during the Olympics. Be sure to put your mouse over Alex’s images in his portfolio for descriptions and context.

Gasp! Caged dogs and smiling rural Chinese folk smoking. Combined, this is recipe for an attracting a flood of animal lovers cum Chinese-haters from Facebook. Psst, Alex!

Pretty self-explanatory this one.

That line-worker doesn’t seem to be amused with Alex snapping her mug (she’s definitely no iPhone Girl)…but that’s a lot of red Porsche Caymens and White Audi TTs.

Be sure to visit Alex’s website and spend an hour or afternoon browsing his work. One, he’s kinda lonely and wants the company. Two, a picture is worth a thousand words and all that. Three, seriously, it is through good photographs and good photographers that we normal folk literally have the opportunity to “see” more of this incredibly large world.

Oh, and he covers weird and silly stuff too…like cosplayers.

Shanghaiist Editor Elaine Chow adds dramatic tension for the recent chinaSMACK, CNReviews, & Shanghaiist Shanghai Movie Night and a sensationalist story on children getting high on hand sanitizers.