Last night, I had a great time fraternizing with my fellow Shanghai-based English-language bloggers at the recently opened and utterly fatabulous Boxing Cat Brewery (BCB) on Fuxing Lu in the French Concession.
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:
- 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.
- Blocked blogs, notably Danwei.
- 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.
- Green Tours, Red Tours, and where Hu Yaobang is buried.
- Chinese university students who know about 6/4.
- Environmentally damaged land in China.
- Factories and businesses with frightening labor and safety standards.
- Journalists staying in dodging “three-star” China accommodations with scandalous artwork.
- Co-owner of Boxing Car Brewery Gary Heyne‘s involvement in bringing brew water to Iraq.
- Quickly deteriorating former Olympic venues in China and Athens.
- The forehead-slapping glut of Beijing commercial real estate.
- Improving freedom of movement and reporting for journalists in China.
- Africans protesting, and why we heard about it.
- Visas and the unlikelihood of getting deported from China these days.
- How blogging has or hasn’t helped people with their business.
- Uigurs.
- The Chinese government’s proclivity for doing things in the worst possible way (mostly PR-wise).
- Marks & Spencer’s opening in Shanghai.
- Malcome Moore getting abused by British expats on his blog for giving Marks & Spencer’s Shanghai store a bad review.
- People falling to their doom in Marks & Spencer.
- Experiences with United States Consul General Beatrice Camp.
- Summer Camp.
- Malcome Moore getting abused on his blog in general.
- Weird names Chinese people name themselves (i.e. Three Hundred, Snake, Zero, Cocaine, and Creamy).
- 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?
