Falun Gong, China, and biases…

Charles Custer has another great post at ChinaGeeks that touches upon a theme that have been popular on CNR recently: extremism, truths in the middle, and the understanding we “desperately, desperately need.” It also helps that he uses the the well-known Falun Gong as something of a lightning rod to make his point.

I’ve gone ahead and reprinted the entire text of Custer’s post below, again for the benefit of readers in China blocked by the Great Firewall. It appears that the page or the page’s URL trips a keyword filter, thereby reseting the connection when you try visiting it. The rest of ChinaGeeks is accessible as usual though.

UPDATE: Our man Custer has changed the URL which should be accessible now now. The links in this post reflect the new address.

Here we go:

Falun Gong and the Hardest Thing About Studying China

There is nowhere on earth we can learn about or read about without bias, but even given the assumption that bias exists everywhere, China might be the worst country in the world to attempt to study if you’re trying to assess the veracity of anything remotely controversial.

Let’s take, for example, the most recent English language issue of the Epoch Times, sitting for free on a table near the entrance of Yale University’s Hall of Graduate Studies. This issue begins their series marking the tenth anniversary marking the outlawing of Falun Gong in China in 1999, and contains several articles documenting the events that led to the ban. Specifically, they say the regime “zeroed in” on Falun Gong after the publication of Zhuan Falun (Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi’s rambling treatise). They don’t mention why, what was contained in the book, or, for that matter, that their newspaper was founded by Falun Gong members. It is as though the CCPs banning of Falun Gong was a thunderbolt out of a clear blue sky.

Of course, it’s not really a secret that the Epoch Times has an agenda. At best, their reports are “difficult to corroborate” (Orville Schell), at worst, they are an embarrassment to journalism. Still, they have their supporters. UPenn professor Arthur Waldron said “foreigners (and Chinese) who want to get a sense of what is really going on in China should pay at least as much attention to The Epoch Times as they do to the People’s Daily.”

As far as we can tell, he wasn’t intentionally being ironic, but it’s actually a great point. People searching for information on Falun Gong are likely to find a long list of articles and websites run by supporters or a long list of condemnations, depending on what language they’re searching in.

And the truth is, it’s very difficult to tell what the truth is. On the one hand, Falun Gong sounds an awful lot like some of the crazy cults that exist in the US; In the Zhuan Falun, Li Hongzhi writes that:

He can personally heal disease and that his followers can stop speeding cars using the powers of his teachings. He writes that the Falun Gong emblem exists in the bellies of practitioners, who can see through the celestial eyes in their foreheads. Li believes “humankind is degenerating and demons are everywhere”; extraterrestrials are everywhere, too; and that Africa boasts a 2-billion-year-old nuclear reactor. He also says he can fly.

On the other hand, at least some of the reported rights violations — which include some pretty horrifying things — are probably true. After all, the CCP is willing to abuse other citizens with reckless abandon, so why would Falun Gong practitioners be any different? As is often the case, it seems the truth lies somewhere in the middle of the two extremes, but when it comes to China, the extreme voices are often so loud they completely drown out any moderates. Here, it’s People’s Daily vs. Epoch Times. A few weeks ago, it was People’s Daily vs. World Uighur Conference. Whenever the next issue comes up it will happen again.

The problem, of course, is that most people don’t care as much as we do, and aren’t willing to spend hours sifting through drivel and propaganda for the little nuggets of truth that accidentally got left lying around. So they end up believing that either one side or the other murders babies, and everyone digs in further. Falun Gong is an “evil cult” or China is an “evil empire”; there is no middle ground.

This kind of extremism prevents understanding when understanding is what we desperately, desperately need.

For the record, I personally think that Falun Gong is about as crazy as Scientology, and that China has every right to ban the spread of anti-science superstition as it leads to people making idiotic medical decisions; but I also think China could easily enforce this ban in a way that is nonviolent and that allows Falun Gong believers to think whatever they want (and do whatever exercises they want) so long as they stop telling people qigong can cure all of their diseases.

Also for the record, I’ll be monitoring the comments here pretty carefully as this has the potential to lead to its own idiotic screaming match between extremists. What we’re talking about here is how extremism prevents learning, growth, understanding, and intelligent discourse (or how it doesn’t).

Read this excellent post at its original location here »

Chinese websites for product reviews…

We haven’t featured an Adam Schokora “Friday 5″ post in a while so we’re a bit overdue for recommending that CNR readers take a gander over yonder for a collection of notable websites and web resources in and for China, this time for product reviews for restaurants, travel, cosmetics, information technology (IT), and education:

travel ::
Visiting someplace new with an untested tour agency can be an unsettling prospect, so many Chinese netizens turn to specific websites that offer peer recommendations and ratings. General review sites for travel include the popular portal for booking plane tickets and hotels, Ctrip (http://www.ctrip.com/ ). CTrip features a destination guide (http://destguides.ctrip.com ) whose landing page lists top-rated destinations, which at the moment are Hunan’s Zhangjiajie (http://bit.ly/oPHbt ), with over 11,626 reviews, and Yunnan’s Lijiang (http://bit.ly/yoij8 ), with around 1,600 reviews. Each review page has a combination of photographs, routes to nearby tourist and scenic spots (such as the Tiger Leaping Gorge outside of Lijiang), and a temperature graph for the area. In addition to rating the sites, netizens can ask and answer specific questions. The review section of travel portal Let’s Travel Together (http://www.17u.com/comment/ ) is more comprehensive, with destinations in every major city including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong, and smaller ones such as Wuhan and Suzhou. The website has community features in addition to straightforward reviewing: 17u hosts a blog section (http://www.17u.com/blog/ ) whose posts can be promoted through a “digg”-type system. On a smaller scale is the Yododo travel website (http://www.yododo.com/ ), which lets netizens search for reviews and upload videos from their favorite destinations (http://bit.ly/LYxf1 ). Yododo’s reviews are short and quick (http://www.yododo.com/review/ ), more like a message board than the in-depth analysis encouraged on other sites, and feature only one or two lines for each city. The range of travel review websites is quite broad: many individual destinations have websites devoted to them alone, where netizens can appraise food, lodging, and attractions. Zhangjiajie, for example, has a travel site with a review section (http://www.zjjok.com/dianping/ ), and the city of Wuhan hosts a travel website (http://www.gotowuhan.com.cn ) with a review subsite (http://dp.gotowuhan.com.cn/ ), as well as blogs (http://blog.gotowuhan.com.cn/ ) and a BBS discussion forum (http://bbs.gotowuhan.com.cn/ ).

If there’s a problem with Schokora’s “Friday 5″ posts, its the fact that the vast majority of these websites are all in Chinese and thus difficult to use for anyone who doesn’t actually read Chinese. Nonetheless, it’s free market research and information, which would be useful for anyone business-inclined. Do with it as you would. Read the full monty here »

China has more internet users than America has people…

You may have already heard the recent news that China now has a whopping 338 million internet users, especially since it got plenty of play on all the major news portals presenting it as a “hm, that’s interesting” news item of the moment. For those of you who haven’t, ChinaGeeks ran an a post a few days back with more “hm, that’s interesting” comparisons to help you digest what 338 million is like, along with a brief question as to how these massive and growing numbers relate to China’s internet censorship. An excerpt:

To start with, let’s get a handle on just how large a number that is. If every single person in the United States used the internet, we wouldn’t hit that mark. In fact, according to the US census bureau, China has more internet users than every other country has people (except India). But perhaps a visual aid is in order:

100,000,000 pennies.

That’s what a hundred million pennies would look like, stacked as tightly as possible. 300 million pennies would weigh over 900 tons, or approximately the weight of six blue whales. For an alternative frame of reference, open this site 338 times and count the dots. That’s how many people are using the internet in China right now.

Of course, by the time you finish counting all of those dots, there will be more. A lot more. In the past six months alone, 40 million Chinese people have joined the ranks of China’s netizen community. Some Chinese are using their phones to access it (155 million). Some are playing games (30 million new online gamers in the past six months). Some are online shopping (14 million new users in the past six months). Plenty are downloading music and watching videos.

Yeah, there are a lot of people in China. This is just another way to wrap your head around it. Go read the entire post »

Bonus! If you’re a bit well-versed in the internet or curious to learn more, you can also venture over and read a piece by a certain Ian Bell who is very skeptical of China’s internet numbers, suggesting that the government is playing up the numbers to attract foreign investment. If you’re well-versed in the internet industry, you’ll probably spot the glaring assumptions and errors in rationale immediately (i.e. Using Compete, Comscore, and Alexa to measure Chinese internet traffic? Are you serious?). If not, be sure to read the comments by Kaiser Kuo and Sage Brennan underneath the post.

I personally want to insinuate (well, so much for that) that Ian Bell’s approach to the issue is tainted with a bit of ethnocentrism, most telling in his flabbergasting of why “giants” like Microsoft, Google, Cisco, eBay, and Yahoo! haven’t been as resoundingly successful in China as he imagines they should be. The implication that they were somehow deceived or denied success by the shady Chinese government damnably overlooks the first thing that matters in business: how well one’s service/product meets the needs of the target market. So why does Ian assume success for them? Just because they were successful in the West?

Ian does make a few other tangential points in his piece, many of which aren’t really points as they are clichéd snipes, but I won’t discuss them at this time. Either way, the responses by Kuo and Brennan have good information for anyone interested in China’s internet scene. Go ahead and take a gander »

That’s it for this week. Have a link to a blog post that shouldn’t be missed? Be sure to share it with everyone in the comments, and don’t forget to tell us why you recommend it!

Credit: MARK RALSTON (AFP/Getty Images)

How Dare We Feel Sorry For Ourselves…

Richard Burger’s personal blog, The Peking Duck (recently blocked by the GFW), may not be a large blog but it’s definitely one of the oldest English-language blogs about China with a small but loyal readership. Anyone who is remotely someone in the ever-incestuous English China blogosphere either know him or know of his writing, and generally think he’s a swell guy even over strong and passionate differences. While I myself have had very strong disagreements wth him recently, I’ve historically tended to nod my head whenever he shares his thoughts. Richard is returning to the States soon, and his recent posts have reflected a certain reflective mood I’m sure he’s going through. Here’s an excerpt to a particularly good post he wrote in the last week titled “The Begger“:

All of these thoughts of disgust and distaste took place in a fraction of a second. I heard the voice screaming the single word, Xie xie! Xie xie! As the barker inched toward me. I vowed not to turn around. That’s what they want, especially if you’re a laowai – looking at them gives them that window to grab your heart and your wallet. I just listened in annoyance and kept focused on my dictionary.

But then the beggar was too close for me to ignore her. Soon she was right alongside of me, still crying out, “Xie xie! Xie xie!” And she then crossed the line, invading my personal space – she shook my arm, forcing me to turn around to tell her to her face to please back off.

It was in that instant that my heart stopped, my mind dissolved and I felt one of those deep shivers that went straight to my soul. For the beggar was not a beggar at all. The beggar was a woman, somewhere between 40 and 50 years old, and she was leading by the hand a severely retarded young man, maybe 17 years old, a spastic whose arms were flailing as he walked. The woman was shouting “Xie xie, xie xie!” to thank people for getting out of the way so that the boy could pass without his arms hitting anyone. She was not begging me for anything, she was thanking me for allowing her to pass and exit the bus with her boy. (I don’t know if this was her son or grandson, but I do know her devotion to him was total and unstoppable.)

If the above story is too sentimental and happy, and you need something more aggravating and disappointing, here’s one of Richard’s more negative but equally poignant China memories, though it technically doesn’t belong in this week’s Weekly Review: Laowai!

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. You too have experienced panhandling and begging in China, whether on the streets or in the subways.
2. Reminders of our humanity are always good reminders, especially if we’ve lost a bit of our humanity living in what we feel to be a rather inhuman place where rather inhuman things happen all too inhumanly often.

The Seven Habits Of Highly Ineffective Expats

Steven Covey would be proud. The Lost Laowai has another fun and easy-to-digest post this past week sure to be applicable to make China expats or even short-term visitors (study abroad students, interns, etc.). The title above says it all, this post is about seven bad habits foreigners living in China tend to fall into. Here’s one:

Habit #1
Comparisons

“It’s not like this back home”
“In [insert home country back home] it’s like….”

If you’ve never heard this whine then you must not be talking to many foreigners, and if you’ve never said this then you must not talk to anyone period. For a number of people nothing here can ever be as good as it is back home, wherever that may be.

Obviously, the coffee here is not going to be as good as it is in the West. Clearly the Chinese are not experts at making hamburgers and french fries. The public transport is very clearly going to be much, much more crowded here than back home. Yes, the streets are probably dirtier here than a street in the suburbs.

These are the charms that keep China interesting, and very different from home. You will not be able to get a cup of tea back home like you can here, no Western chain will be able to satisfy your fried rice cravings, and just where are you going to spit when you have to back home?

I will never claim to be innocent of this ugly habit, but there has to be a time and place where you need to accept China for what it is, a wildly different place. While some things are better at home, there are definitely things that are better here. It is important to try to keep that in context, especially when you are experiencing the worst this nation has to offer.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. You make unfair comparisons between China and wherever you’re from or wherever you’ve had it better.
2. You routinely think about when you’re “going home” or “taking a vacation from China”.
3. You frequent the same places over and over again and many of them are foreign.
4. You find yourself in a country other than China whenever you have days off.
5. You drink a lot. Or others think you drink a lot. Even if you deny it.
6. You have an Ayi, and you purposefully live like a sloth because you have an Ayi.
7. You think you know China, understand China, get China.

V Is For Vendetta

When I said that a lot of people were outraged by the whole Green Dam and CCTV attacking Google thing, I wasn’t joking. Some Chinese netizens have taken upon themselves to become Guy Fawkes, spreading something of an open-letter titled “Declaration of the Anonymous Netizens 2009” (Chinese version, the deftly-translated English version can be found here). Here’s a preview sure to titilate:

To the Internet censors of China,

We are the Anonymous Netizens. We have seen your moves on the Internet. You have deprived your netizens of the freedom of speech. You have come to see technology as your mortal enemy. You have clouded and distorted the truth in collaboration with Party mouthpieces. You have hired commentators to create the “public opinion” you wanted to see. All these are etched into our collective memory. More recently, you forced the installation of Green Dam on the entire population and smothered Google with vicious slander. It is now clear as day: what you want is the complete control and censorship of the Internet. We hereby declare that we, the Anonymous Netizens, are going to launch our attack worldwide on your censorship system starting on July 1st, 2009.

July 1st, eh? Mark your calendars. If anything does happen, I hope it’s a lot more interesting than the proposed boycott.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. Who doesn’t dig the Guy Fawkes mask?
2. Just in case you forgot that there’s a plurality of opinion amongst Chinese netizens, and people.
3. Who doesn’t get excited by sweeping declarations? Stick it to The Man, man!

Michael Jackson Has Left The Building

The King of Pop passed away this past week. As many Americans learned of the news late evening Thursday, the Chinese learned of the news as they woke up and approached their Friday workday. chinaSMACK translated a bunch of Chinese netizen comments Friday to show us how Chinese people were reacting to news of Jackson’s death (some critical, most sentimental and respectful), Danwei showed us how many Chinese newspapers honored the singer with front-page coverage on Saturday, and shameless shanzhai-copycat Chinahush also translated some more Chinese netizen comments Sunday. Samples:

Pathetic countrymen, it is just a single foreign entertainment star. At most, it is regrettable, but is this worth all of you being so miserable? Truly making a fuss over nothing.

He was a music genius…but when he betrayed his own skin color and bleached his skin white, when he started hating his own race and changed his face so much that he no longer looked like himself, he became a monster/freak…Were it not for this, I believe he would have had a better life.

In university there was a girl who was passionately in love with Michael. Whenever she heard anyone say he was “abnormal/perverted/deviant” she would get angry and fight with them. It was from that girl that I slowly came to realize his charm! Now when I look at his stuff from 20 years ago I still get excited and thrilled! He is not just a king to me but also a a symbol of my youth!

MJ passed away~~ makes me feel very old. The superstar of a generation.

He doesn’t know that in China there is a group of fans who are infatuated with him, who will go crazy for him, who will always support him…once again: Goodbye, we love you.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. Michael Jackson.
2. Wow, the Chinese also liked Michael Jackson?! Didn’t know we had that in common…
3. Wow, the Chinese can also be haters?! Didn’t know we had that in common…

Do Cool Stuff With Cool Chinese People

Because everyone who does parkour, biking, skateboarding, dancing, and rock climbing are automatically “cool.” Okay, the biking not so much, especially in China, unless its super aggro-mountain-jumping biking because then that’s kinda cool in a nation of bicyclists. As expected, we’ve got another Adam Schokora Fifty-5 entry for this week’s Weekly Review and this time he’s offering a list of websites for Chinese “alternative sports enthusiasts”. If you’re good with Chinese and looking to meet some like-minded locals for…I dunno…jumping between building ledges together, Adam’s links may be a good starting point for you:

:: online communities in China can link people together based on common interests. Sometimes, these interests are located online — gaming, net lit, online video, tech — but often times people are involved in offline pursuits that they wish to share with their netizen friends. Some communities / discussion forums are national in nature and connect people from across the country. Others are more locally-focused and serve as online outposts of a groups that meet frequently in the real world. Although each of the following activities takes place offline, practitioners meet online to plan events, share videos, seek help with techniques, or shoot the breeze with other people interested in the same thing.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. You do cool stuff and you’re looking to make some cool local friends to do that cool stuff with.
2. Because you’re cool.

That’s it for this week. Have a link to a blog post that shouldn’t be missed? Be sure to share it with everyone in the comments, and don’t forget to tell us why you recommend it!

Riding China’s Trains

Jalal from the Lost Laowai Blog recounts his good, bad, and ugly experiences riding a long-distance Chinese train from Shanghai to Hubei. Short-distance trains are often a very cost-efficient alternative to flying in China, but the long-distance, sleeper, multi-day trips can be incredibly brutal, especially if you’re a poor college kid going back to your hometown during Chinese New Year and all you can afford is standing room only for your 48 hour ride…with everyone else in China. An excerpt:

I remembered why I sometimes enjoy long train rides. Of course, with a hard seat ticket anything over 8 hours becomes a test of mental and physical toughness; but journeys in the sleeper carriages can be a great opportunity to socialize, practice your Chinese, people-watch, or just kick back and catch up on some reading. Of course, you might run into a couple of clowns, like I did on the way to Hubei, but you takes the rough with the smooth, right?

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. You’ve always been curious about taking the train instead of the plane in China.
2. You’re wondering if Jalal’s experiences remind you of your own.

Anti-Democracy Sentiment In Action

Allie Shi over at Shanghaiist indulged those of us who love hearing what Chinese netizens have to say about anything by translating a bunch of their reactions to the Iranian election controversy. The comments selected are sure to prickle quite a few hairs though:

“现在选举演变成几十年所未有的对抗和骚乱，不知道自由派做何感想？ ——————用军队干呀！敢对抗，杀死他几十万人算个球！反正伊朗人多！军队的枪是干什么的？真是傻瓜。”
“The Iranian presidential election evolved after decades but now is triggering so many protests and riots; I am not sure how the liberal wings of the party would think? Use the army. Whoever fights against the government should be killed. There are so many people in Iran so killing several hundreds of thousands is not a big deal. What does the army do? Foolish (Iranian government).”

“支持内贾德。他是世界上仅有的三个敢于对美国说不的国家领导人之一。他是有骨气有勇气的领导人。”
“I support Ahmadinejad. He is one of the only three leaders of the countries who say no to America. He is a brave and dignified country leader.”"

戈尔输给小步什的时候，小步什也是作弊的，但戈尔比较理性，能以国家安定为重，宣布失败。穆萨维他们有美国支持，但没有大多数伊朗人的支持，输了还不心甘。 ”
“When Bush was elected as the American president, he cheated too. But Al Gore was rational and admitted that he lost because of national stabilization. Mousavi has America as his biggest backer but not many Iranian supporters. He should admitted that he lost.”

Yikes, eh? Quick, go find some other Chinese…

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. You’ve been watching the Iran election fallout.
2. You’re not sure if democracy always works either.
3. You’re part of the 50 cent gang.
4. You’re a masochist who secretly enjoys reading fenqing comments.

Interview With CEO of Chinese Post-90s Generation SNS 360quan.com

And it’s a white guy! Alice with Danwei, the department store that achors the mall of China blogs, posted an interview with Dan Brody talking about China’s post-90s internet culture. Dan Brody is CEO of 360quan.com, “the smallest of the first tier SNS sites, and biggest of the second tier.” Their social networking service/site is focused on China’s youth, particularly those infamously born in the 1990s often stereotyped for their loose morals, goth/emo/punk leanings, and proclivity towards taking exaggerated photos of themselves…and then photoshopping them to be even more exaggerated. Here’s part of the interview:

Danwei: Is 360quan.com unique?
DB: There’s obviously lots of other social networking sites, but each has it’s own niche. For instance, Douban.com is more cultural, and Kaixin001.com is for white-collar office workers － but that’s basically all about branding. All large websites in China have basically the same demographics. For instance, bands and music never accounted for MySpace’s traffic in the US; 90% of their traffic is still just regular people talking to each other. And Xiaonei.com is supposedly just for students, but they have more members than there are students in China.

We position ourselves as the post-90s generation, very hip trendy and new, and we have strong branding on this by finding cool kids on the website — kids who play parkour, graffiti artists, punks — and promoting them. That’s our branding, but by definition cool people can never be the majority of our users, because cool people are only a small percentage of any social group. The people who use our website are the same people who use other large websites in China. What each website does is to feature and promote a group of people who are most interesting for them to associate with their brand.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. Great insights into Chinese youth culture.
2. Great insider insights into the Chinese SNS business and market.

Nail Houses In China (and around the world)

Nail houses are not the same as hair salons, though those of us with quick and dirty minds might occasionally confuse the two given the right context. Nail houses refer to those stubborn homeowners or tenants who refuse to sell or vacate their property to a developer that has already purchased and leveled the surrounding buildings to build something new (and hopefully more profitable). They’re called “nail houses” because, well, they stick out like a nail. *badabing!* This post comes from a non-China blog called Deputy Dog, but nonetheless features 3 nail houses from China (2 from America, 1 from Japan) with some great pictures:

perhaps the most famous nail house in history was situated on a huge mound of dirt in chonqing until april 2007, at which point it was demolished by exhausted developers after battling for 3 years and eventually parting with ¥1m. the house’s owner, mrs wu ping, was the only person from 241 properties who refused to leave when asked in 2004 in order to make way for a new shopping centre. she really dug her heels in and the story quickly spread around the world by way of the intertubes. there’s an interesting interview with mrs wu here. following some searching, see what i believe to be the site of wu ping’s old house here on google schnapps.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. Everyone loves a rebel, especially in the face of evil monolithic greedy capitalist land developers! Especially if the latter are Chinese! *shakes fist*
2. Oooooh, nifty pictures.

8 Successful Tips On Being A Successful Government Official

More hair-raising this week comes courtesy of Fool’s Mountain, where they post a translation of a letter written by a Jiangsu government official to his son containing 8 pieces of advice for joining the world of politics that would make Machiavelli (the Italian, not the rapper) proud:

1. Don’t seek truth, and don’t search for the essence of things.

Leave these tasks to intellectuals. The credo you have to firmly keep in mind: “as long as it is advantageous to oneself, it is correct.” If you have difficulty to grasp this, then follow this simplified principle: “whatever the higher-ups promoting is correct.”

2. Not only you have to be a liar, but also you have to be a virtuoso liar.

You should build a habit of telling lies. No, actually you should treat it as a mission with the goal that you are able to believe your own lies. Prostitution and politicians are very similar professions. The difference is that being an official is to sell one’s mouth. Remember, your mouth does not belong to you anymore once you become an official. You have to say according to what you need, not what you think.

Plus six more gems. If there is anything morally redeemable in this, it is the final non-enumerated bit of advice:

These are the principles of being an official. Think carefully now, if you can do all of these, your will have a smooth sailing career. Not up to the task? It’s high time to switch to another profession.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. You’re a politician/government offiicial, or looking forward to a career in politics/officialdom.
2. You’re a marketer/salesman, or looking forward to a career in marketing/sales.

Europe As Center Of The World

Jottings from the Granite Studio is a favorite for many English China bloggers in our small little admittedly incestuous English China blogosphere. By “incestuous”, it isn’t that we all know each other (and engage in depravities), but we all know of each others’ writing. Jeremiah is a history teacher in Beijing, China and “a PhD Candidate at a large public research university in Northern California” (Go Bears?) who regularly posts some really great stuff on China. This past week, he decided to take to task an op-ed column written by a student from a university in the American South, highlighting the all too common perception most people have of China, particularly those who have never been to China (and some who have, and even continue to live here):

The Chinese mentality is nothing new. If one delves deep into the history books, they can find that the Chinese have possessed such a thought process since their earliest days. They were, and remain, “The Middle Kingdom” or “The Central Nation.” (In fairness, the Europeans have often thought of themselves as “The Middle Earth,” but they at least have the geography to back it up.)

Ok, I’m not a Europeanist, but has anyone not named J.R.R. Tolkien ever used the term “Middle Earth” when thinking of Europe?  And exactly what kind of maps do they use at this school to geographically “back up” Europe’s location in the middle of the earth?

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. Scenes of ignorance getting taken down amuse you (as they do me).
2. Middle Earth, yeah!
3. Quotes like “answering questions and questioning answers” and “not letting students become too comfortable in certainties” resonate with you (as they should everyone).

China’s Dissidents Are Self-Serving Attention Whores

Okay, not quite, but Alice Liu from Asia Times Online (via CDT) brings some critical perspective to a lot of Chinese “digital dissidents” (many of whom actually live in China) that many bleeding-heart liberals champion are fond of championing. Her opinions, or the opinions she represents, may divide some of you with activist leanings:

So what drives him to be a citizen journalist? Does he care about the current political situation in China, or is it just means for self-promotion? Probably more of the latter. Zola has been accused by some of accepting money from his interviewees, which he does not deny, saying he needs to raise funds somehow.

Many bloggers from the “me generation” are just like Zola. They may appear rebellious, and committed to exposing scandals, but they do this mainly for self-satisfaction or fame. The majority of these bloggers are not politically adventurous, and most, like Zola, won’t criticize the communist authorities. In short, they are apolitical.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. As many have argued before, a person’s character and agenda can be just as important as what that person does or says. At the very least, it’ll help you better understand what they may really be doing or saying.
2. Wut?!? Zola is GOD! BLASPHEMER!

CCTV Embarrasses Itself Yet Again

In what may be a continuation of the last few weeks’ ongoing Green Dam debacle, CCTV ran a news piece pointing a big fat (burning?) CCTV finger at Google.cn for providing search results with links to “vulgar content” that is officially prohibited in China. They also featured an interview where some “university student” expounded on how online porn basically turned his classmate into a zombie. The fact that “vulgar content” is quite ubiquitous (sex sells…always) even in the supposedly “sanitized” Chinese internet was not lost upon the legions of Chinese (and foreign) netizens who quickly scratched their chins wondering why Google was singled out when Baidu is just as bad. A small human flesh search then also discovered that the “university student” CCTV featured was actually a CCTV employee. Ouch.

English-language blogs that covered aspects of this story included:

• GVO: CCTV’s propaganda campaign against Google.cn
• Danwei: State media blames Google for porn
• ESWN: CCTV vs Google.cn & <Focus Interview> Interviewed Its Own Intern
• chinaSMACK: Chinese Netizen Reactions To CCTV Attacking Google

The “university student’s”  famous last words:

I feel that the pornographic or obscene information on the Internet is particularly harmful.  The harm becomes especially big when it is linked by Google.  There is a fellow student of mine. He had been somewhat curious about this sort of thing.  So he visited pornographic websites and he ended up being very absent-minded for a while. Then the state began an anti-pornography campaign.  He did not go there for a while and he got better.  Then he found out that when he went through search engines such as Google.cn with many users, he could still reach these kinds of websites.  So he went back to visiting those many linked websites.  He suffered a relapse.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. Hahahaha…
2. Hahaha…
3. Haha…
4. Ha.

More Ways To Get Around That Blasted GFW

Not a week goes by without Mr. Schokora getting a mention and yet again he gets one most deservedly. He should get a Adam Schokora corner or something. Oh wait, that’s his blog. Anyway, this week’s hella awesome “Friday 5″ post shares tips and tricks on how to circumvent China’s Net Nanny, that royal pain in the ass that stops you from visiting websites the Chinese censors don’t want you visiting. The entire post itself is rendered as an image instead of text, a common trick some bloggers use in hopes of evading text filters.

Adam, if you’re reading this, I’m waiting for your tweet asking me to update this post because you cleaned up this post by, I dunno, adding links via HTML image maps. That would cement your niubi status.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. Knowledge is power.
2. Power is access.
3. Access is freedom.
4. Freedom is knowledge.

That’s it for this week. Have a link to a blog post that shouldn’t be missed? Be sure to share it with everyone in the comments, and don’t forget to tell us why you recommend it!

The Green Dam Debacle As Decentralizing Censorship

In all the hoopla surrounding the Green Dam Youth Escort internet filtering software that is reportedly set to be installed on all new PCs sold in China after July 1st, most journalists focused on the usual suspects of increasing government censorship, oppression, and infringement upon privacy. Those who went beyond politics and into economics at most only considered that this was some sort of nepotistic pork-barrel project.

Fons Tuinstra of the China Herald blog, however, brings up an interesting consideration that very few others thought of: Is forcing internet filtering and censorship software onto individual users’ computers really just one way to decentralize or distribute the resources needed to maintain China’s existing internet censorship policy?

To put that thought in this case into perspective we have to go back to an incident that happened with Tencent’s QQ services, then and now China’s more powerful social network company. Because of the compulsory censorship filters Tencent had to maintain massive filter operations at their servers, so huge the company’s capacity could not deal with the high growth it faced. A few times its systems when down, because their corporate internet filters got overheated.

They then came with a solution that looked initially absolute brilliant. It forced its users during an update of the software to download also a personal internet filter on their own computer and save the company a lot of investments in increasing their own capacity.

Instead of maintaining and continuously expanding a centralized computer system for manipulating what is accessible on the internet for its users, would it be more cost-effective to spread the load onto each individual user’s computer? Were this a consideration behind the Green Dam Youth Escort project, it would have been remarkable for its economic pragmatism. Unfortunately, the idea is still mind-numblingly idiotic.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. It is always beneficial for you to look at things in a different, unexpected way. You know, thinking out of the box and all that.

Chinese Hui Muslim Minority 1, Chengguan 0

“Chengguan” is the Chinese name for what can roughly be described as low-level enforcers of municipal codes. They’re like…para-police, sort of. They’re job is to generally keep the streets clean of unlicensed peddlers and street vendors and other odds and ends. Their infamous tactics include intimidation, extortion, and general hooliganism.

Joe of chinaSMACK reported an interesting story this week where a chengguan effort to clear out some street peddlers was ultimately stymied when the peddlers and surrounding civilian crowd got fed up and fought back. At the sight of overwhelming resistence, the other chengguan and back-up police retreated, but the captain of the chengguan squad was captured and publicly, er…”struggled” against. The crowd basically kicked his ass and cursed him until he begged for mercy. Naturally, this victory was reported onto China’s discussion forums, where the usual “hard-working people vs. bullying chengguan” dynamic became “bullying chengguan vs. lawless Hui/Muslim minority” for some. Prejudice against ethnicities and religious belief then became an issue, which many foreigners instantly seized upon, both in the comments at chinaSMACK and over at ChinaGeeks where Custer remarks:

Indeed, the Chinese comments are fascinating. Generally speaking, the Chinese internet has nothing but enmity for chengguan. Other recent popular topics about chengguan on the Chinese internet netizens have compared chengguan to (among other things) the Japanese army and Satan. Here, though, they’re generally much more sympathetic, perhaps because it seems clear the man was beaten quite ruthlessly. And, as Joe reported, they’ve got plenty of bad things to say about the Hui people.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. China is not as homogeneous as you think.
2. China is not as heterogeneous as you think.
3. You’re not a fan of the “chengguan” either. Join the club.

Political Discussion In China, Where Foreigners Never Tread

Adam Schokora is back again this week with yet another interesting Friday 5 post, this time on where Chinese netizens discuss politics on the internet. Contrary to the assumptions made popular by Western media and foreigners, a ton of political discussions happen on China’s (even monitored and regulated) internet. Adam offers us a harrowing list of various websites where such activity happens, though they’re certainly much smaller than the major portals and mainstream forums you might see translated by websites like chinaSMACK (which generally steers towards more social topics with broad appeal).  Here’s a sample:

general politics ::
Beijing’s Utopia BBS discussion forum may be the most well-known forum for debate about domestic and international issues. It tends to slant leftward, and has a special section for Mao Zedong. Leading special topics on Utopia currently include an ongoing critique of neoliberalism and articles on Lu Chuan’s Nanjing Massacre movie City of Life and Death. Marxist Review is a Beijing-based current events forum with an ostensibly Marxist slant. Recent topics include multi-party government, bureaucratic socialism, and democracy in the hands of revolutionary masses vs. the right. School of Athens is a academically-flavored community that slants in a liberal direction, particularly after absorbing many of the members of the liberal Fatianxia law commentary site following its harmonization in December, 2008 (and in fact, many pages on School of Athens imply that it actually is the successor to Fatianxia). Discussion involves the rule of law and civic society. A recent post that reposted an essay on freedom of speech by author Lin Da’s drew a comment thread in which netizens felt that Zhongnanhai (China’s White House) could learn something from it.

The interesting observation to add here is how much input foreigners tend to have on Chinese politics, but how rarely they actually seem intent on engaging the Chinese on those politics. Language is only one reason.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. You’re genuinely interested in discussing politics with actual Chinese people, instead of preaching to the choir to reaffirm your ideology. If so, here’s a list of places you can start, but you might need to learn Chinese first.
2. You’re an internet spy for foreign imperialist powers and you need a list of targets to infiltrate and incite social instability towards the ultimate goal of keeping China down. You already know Chinese because your employer trained you well.

Blast From the Past: Westernization is Barbarization, Not Modernization

CDT digs up what promises to be an inflammatory essay written by a certain Henry C.K. Liu (I sense quite a few ears perking up) on Asia Times Online from nearly six years ago! The essay itself is long enough to be ripe for the 20 excerpts treatment, but I’ll go ahead and recommend it here for now and mull over dissecting its interesting argumentative parts later.

It is a little hard to encapsulate the thrust of the entire essay but Liu is generally talking a lot of shit about the West and Western attitudes, arguing that the West has illegitimately co-opted the concept of “modernity.” There are ton of great excerpts I want to use, all of which are going to pop a vein in many foreigners’ temples.

Confucian ethics notwithstanding, morality and honor failed to save China from Western imperialism, because morality and honor require observation from both opponents. It was not a clash of civilizations, but a clash between civilization and barbarism. Militarism is a race toward barbarism camouflaged by technology as modernity. [...]

Western military prowess, with its arsenal of smart bombs and weapons of mass destruction ready for deployment to impose its will on others, is not a march toward modernity, but a retreat toward barbarism. A civilization built on militarization of the peace remains a barbaric civilization. What Western militarism has done is to abduct modernity as synonymous with Western civilization, depriving human civilization of an evolving process of cultural diversity. The effect of this abduction of modernity had been profound and comprehensive.

Oh schnap! Henry just called Westerners immoral and dishonorable! Whatcha gonna do ’bout it?!

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. It is an interesting piece of rhetoric that coincidentally tests many people’s ability to patiently and successfully dissect, understand, and rebut the arguments made before their knee-jerk emotional responses kick in.
2. In all seriousness, if you’re not academically inclined, you will probably actually want to avoid this piece. Not only is it long, but it’s filled with history and academic terms. I’ve unfairly oversimplified the piece above by focusing on some of its more inflammatory language.

That’s it for this week. Have a link to a blog post that shouldn’t be missed? Be sure to share it with everyone in the comments, and don’t forget to tell us why you recommend it!

Here are five interesting blog posts from the past week that will help you join Chinese netizens in despising the 90后, understand serial vs. parallel, identify dangerous idiocy, appreciate China’s human rights situation, and pimp that cute old lady/dude down the street online.

Profiling China’s Post-90s Generation Youth…and Emo-Punk-Goths

From Adam J. Schokora’s fifty 5 blog comes “friday 5 | china’s post-90 generation & the internet ::“, a by-product of his work for Edelman Digital, the PR firm, and part of his weekly Friday 5 series of posts. This piece was published last Sunday, three days late, and thus makes it into this week’s CNR Weekly Review. As with every one of Adam’s Friday 5 pieces, the topic is broken down into 5 detailed parts, this time, explaining the characteristics and trends of China’s infamous “post-90s generation”. An excerpt:

:: like China’s “Post-80s Generation” before it, the “Post-90s Generation” is a shorthand for a vaguely-defined demographic group of Chinese people born roughly in the same decade. On the Chinese Internet, however, “Post-90s” has connotations of a young, affluent, urban, alternative aesthetic, and includes among its ranks people born in the mid to late 80s as well — see the reader age poll on FZL8.com which has choices for ages 16-21; 30% of respondents are under 16, and 15-20% were born in the 80s.

In hopes of helping everyone better understand this sometimes odd and detached demographic, the five categories below provide a rough outline of the image and characteristics conjured up in the minds of today’s Chinese netizens by the term “Post-90s.”

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. You’re old and moldy, but want to know what them darn (Chinese) kids are up to these days online.

James Fallows on Speculation vs. Analysis

James Fallows of The Atlantic, a favorite amongst many China expats, uses Newsweek’s John Pomfret to pick a fight Anne Applebaum of Slate. He quite plainly explains how Pomfret’s actually offered analysis on how China looks at its relationship with North Korea, whereas Applebaum is just indulging in “speculation — really, paranoid hysteria”. Applebaum declares that “there must be a reason” (obviously insidious) why the “puppeteer” China doesn’t put a stop to the “farce” of its “puppet”, North Korea. Fallows says, “no, you’re an idiot.” Well, not in those words, but in words like these:

I’m not generally looking for fights with people, so why bother to mention this? The minor reason is that since the topic is the same and both writers are necessarily working with imperfect information about North Korea, it’s a particularly stark illustration of the difference between informed analysis, explaining its steps of logic, and simply spinning out a snappy “hey, this could be interesting!” idea with minimal effort to reality-check.

The major reason is that this is dangerous. This is the kind of cocksure, half-informed assumption of the most threatening and moralistic interpretation of world events that has led to grief in our recent history.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. You do NOT want to be Anne Applebaum.
2. You run into a lot of Anne Applebaums, and need to be reaffirmed that such modes of thinking are indeed grievious insults to intelligence and human dignity.

China Is The Silicon Valley On Steroids

Or not. After a bit of controversy during her visit to China, TechCrunch’s Sarah Lacy returns home to the US to explain “Why China Isn’t The Next Silicon Valley“. Her observations and points go beyond China’s tech scene and apply quite well to the overall business environment and pace in China. Here’s a sample:

What makes China so staggering is that everything that happened to corporate America over decades—think the television and media studios build out of the 1950s, the greed of the 1980s, the dot com bubble, the build out of physical and IT infrastructure, current Web 2.0 and CleanTech innovation—is all happening to China at once.

Imagine: At the same time eCommerce is getting sea legs, TV Home Shopping is also getting hot. Online ads are growing not because people are TiVoing through commercials—both TV and online ads are growth markets at the same time. Ditto for entertainment and piracy: While Hollywood sees the Internet as a threat to its cozy legacy business, China’s entertainment industry is just now building amid a world where piracy is already rampant. No one assumes anyone will buy a CD, so they just look for other ways to make money. The wonder of China right now isn’t just the size of the market. It’s the rate at which dozens of “old” and “new” economies are all maturing amid one another, and the hyper-network effects that such economic progress is having throughout the country.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. You’re interested in doing business in or with China.

China, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia: Where Would You Rather Be?

Dan over at award-winning China Law Blog rants against Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama, begging them to “get a damn clue on human rights,” to stop “embarrassing” the United States, to stop being “hypocrites”, and to stop using human rights to advance their popularity at home. Why? In part because Clinton blasted China for “human rights violations that mostly happened 20 years ago” on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident. Dan cites America political treatment of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, both countries also with serious human rights issues, and asks rhetorically:

If you are female, where would you rather be, Egypt/Saudi Arabia or China?
If you are a homosexual, where would you rather be, Egypt/Saudi Arabia or China?
If you are practice a religion other than Islam, where would you rather be, Egypt/Saudi Arabia or China?
If you are against the government in power, where would you rather be, Egypt/Saudi Arabia or China?
If you are going to be charged with a crime, where would you rather be, Egypt/Saudi Arabia or China?
If you are a journalist, where would you rather be, Egypt/Saudi Arabia or China?

We all know China is the answer to every single question set out above.

Lots of comments, both in agreement and disagreement, are attached to this post. My advice: Be sure you read Dan’s post very carefully several times before you decide what you want to disagree with.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. It might temper or at least give further perspective on the human rights issue/problem you see in China.

Old People Need Lovin’ Too…

Also from Adam J. Schokora’s fifty 5 blog comes this week’s (on-time) Friday 5 post on China’s elderly, mostly on how the geriatric crowd relates to this newfangled thingamajig called the internet! Just imagine that line in Chinese. Excerpt:

China’s Internet population may be dominated by young people, but Chinese seniors have a space of their own online as well. In fact, Baidu.com, China’s leading local search engine, recently launched a special senior-oriented search option that features large text, links to handy reference information like weather and stocks, and a categorized directory of major online destinations that oldsters might find useful. As nice as it is, it’s still a wrapper around a normal browsing experience, and to find individual Web sites specifically targeted at the elderly demographic requires a bit more effort. To that end, I thought it fitting to dig around and take a closer look at the Senior 2.0 scene in China.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. You’re old and moldy, and you want to know what your Chinese counterparts are up to these days online.

That’s it for this week. Have a link to a blog post that shouldn’t be missed? Be sure to share it with everyone in the comments, and don’t forget to tell us why you recommend it!

We got a very gratifying comment via email from a reader that ended with a little humorous jab at the English China blogosphere:

stumbled across this blog by chance … and now i’ve been here like four hours and can’t leave. thanks a lot for the hilarious insight and much-appreciated departure from the standard white-dude-in-china blogs. :)

First, I appreciated the props because Kai had just gone through a major redesign of the site.  Second, I had a chuckle at the “white-dudes” comment…and since my inner dude is just as “white” as some of those “white-dudes” (and in fact many of them speak/read/write Chinese helluva lot better than I can), I’m allowed to laugh along with them, right?

We got another comment from Leo on our post about English China blogs increasingly translating Chinese fora:

I’ll give the English language China-themed blogosphere more respect when it’s more than just a bunch of white guys from a few countries, writing pithy rebuttals to the NYT, CNN, etc; and who tended to see China in monolithic qualities (frequent posts on China as a herd or group, rather than giving cities their own personalities, understanding regions beyond food, etc)…

So I looked at my China blog roll and for the first time stopped to think about the fact that a large number of the blogs, and indeed most of the exceptional English China blogs, were written by “white dudes.”  But more so than this, I was also struck by the consistent focus of so many of these blogs:  current events, politics, media, business, commerce, law.

“Typical” English China Blogs can be edifying, but weighty

Instead of profiling blogs by race of author, I’d instead observe that many of these “typical” English China blogs tackle weighty issues that really force you to think.  I have these blogs on my blogroll because they really advance my personal course of  study on China’s society and economy, and I fully intend to inflict CNReviews readers with such “serious” posts if it achieves my selfish purpose of clarifying my own thinking on issues I care about.

I have a lot of gratitude and respect for Dan Harris, Jeremy Goldkorn &  Joel Martinsen, Sam Flemming, Rebecca MacKinnon, Thomas Crampton, Benjamin Joffe, Rich Brubaker, Will Moss, James Fallows, John Pomfret, David Wolf, Michael Pettis, Adam Minter, Richard Burger, George Godula, Gang Lu, Tangos Chan, Stan Adams, Jeremiah Jenne, Scott Sykes, and many others.  But sometimes it just takes too much brainpower to follow everything you’re saying.

My shameful blogger secret: sometimes I secretly skip my Danwei feed!

Here’s a confession:  more often than not, after a long day at work, I find myself secretly and shamefully avoiding my Danwei RSS feed (and yes, its always Danwei I feel most guilty about avoiding) to slouch over to the chinaSMACK RSS feed for a short, guilty, voyeuristic blog snack.  That’s what this post is about: where to get an interesting, spicy blog snack to make your English China blog experience more tasty.

Ten Eclectic China Blogs you should follow

The answer to English China blog fatigue is to start following some Atypical China Blogs.  And, yes, some of the best are authored by “white dudes” (although some of them may in fact be “fake foreigners“…Adam Schokora comes to mind).  Here they are, in reverse alphabetical order:

1. Wangjianshuo.com
2. Stylites in Beijing
3. RedBox Review
4. IfGoGo.com
5. Expatriate Games
6. China Youth Watch
7. chinaSMACK
8. 88 Bar (八八吧)
9. 6
10. 56minus1 (伍拾陸 minus 壹)

1.  Wangjianshuo

Wangjianshuo’s blog, one of the first and most consistently posting English blogs written by a native Chinese citizen,  is a personal journal that provides insight into Chinese society through the eyes of a Chinese engineer who has progressed in his career to become the head of Baixing.com, a classifieds Website owned by eBay.  He provides helpful insights to English-language people traveling to or living in Shanghai.  What is great about Wangjianshuo’s blog is that it is written by an English-as-a-Second-Language writer, which results in prose that is more accessible to other non-native English speakers.  As a result, he gets English readers from across the world:  Africa, India, Middle East, Russia, Philippines, etc.  Read Wangjianshuo (rss) if you want to read a personal journal that also adds useful travel and relocation information for foreigners. Twitter: @jianshuo.

2.  Stylites in Beijing (stylites.net)

Stylites in Beijing is apparently part of a fashion blog genre called the “street blog”, and was recognized by H&M Magazine as one of the top 5 street blogs in the world. Nels Fryes, photographer and author of Stylites in Beijing, started capturing distinctive street fashion 2 years ago.  Fryes also provides interesting little vignettes that showcase the diversity of experiences among Chinese people today.  This blog is an excellent antidote to ignorant Westerners who think of Chinese as brainwashed, collectivist and oppressed people under the thumb of a totalitarian state.  (You don’t have to tell them that people walking around Nanluoguxiang or Sanlitun Village is not the “real” China). Follow Stylites in Beijing if you are interested in issues of culture, taste, and fashion, as a reflection of change in China’s society.

3.  RedBox Review

RedBox Review is run by Katherine Don, co-founder and Director of Red Box Studio, a Beijing-based contemporary art advisory firm.  The blog features original articles, events listings, gallery reviews, and commentary on and links to other coverage on Chinese contemporary art.  The blog is aimed at people who are either insiders already or interested in contemporary art.  However, it provides an interesting view into what has been one of the hottest areas of contemporary art today, and an area that will undoubtedly face big changes as a result of the global economic meltdown.   Follow RedBox Review (rss) to add the development of Chinese contemporary art to your view of China’s changes. Twitter: @redboxbeijing

4.  IfGoGo.com

IfGoGo is a group blog run by Aw Guo (Guo Qirui), who also runs a big Chinese-language blog called Awflasher.com, featuring Adobe Flash and other Web technologies.  Entitled  “Chinese in English,” the blog provides a mix of personal stories, social commentary, and current events from the perspective of Chinese citizens, mostly of the generations born in the 1980s or 1990s. My favorite writers are Aw Guo, Cat Chen, and Lisa Lee, all of whom I’ve met in person.  Side note: it has been shockingly hard to find Chinese who blog in English.  I expected to find one “Wang Jianshuo” after another once I started digging, but after 16 months of looking, the only bloggers I found were the group on IfGoGo. If you know of any other native Chinese who blog consistently in English, please let me know. I wish they would blog more frequently.  Follow IfGoGo.com (rss) if you want to hear Chinese voices, reflecting on the changes going on in China. Twitter: @awflasher @CatChen

5.  Expatriate Games

Michael, the author of Expatriate Games, is a self-described “American experiencing mid-life” in China, with a focus on developing his photography skills and Photoshop skills.  The result is a collection of portraits and photos that are evocative of China’s diverse society.  He seems to focus on portraits, seeking to connect with the essence of China’s culture through its people.  I think he goes a bit overboard with Photoshop, but his work provides an interesting window into contemporary China.  Follow Expatriate Games (rss)to get a photographic exploration of China, from a newcomer to China that transparently expresses his experience. Twitter: @ExpatriateGames

6.  China Youth Watch (chinayouthology.com)

Zafka Zhang (张安定) heads up a marketing consulting firm focused on Chinese youth marketing.  This blog reflects that focus, observing brands, trends, creative culture, and Internet behavior of Chinese youth.  The blog is not updated as frequently as many other China blogs, but has a nice “coolhunting” feel to it.  Adam Schokora at 56minus1.com has a nice interview of Zafka Zhang.  Expert on virtual worlds, involved in the Creative Commons movement, background as an experimental musician…Zafka seems impossibly…cool.  Follow China Youth Watch (rss) to get a taste of youth culture…and Zafka’s impossibly cool life! Follow Twitter: @chinayouthology @zafka

7.  chinaSMACK

We’ve blogged about repeatedly since we started following Fauna and chinaSMACK in August 2008.  I consider it the most successful China blog launch of 2008.  Tight concept.  Good execution in virtually all aspects.  Good selection of coverage.  Hot and viral, and potentially GFWbait.  Kai wrote extensively about chinaSMACK as the leader in the translation wave of China English blogs.  Follow chinaSMACK (rss) to read about hot and viral internet stories and the reactions they engender in the Chinese internet.

8.  88 Bar (八八吧)

Run by Lyn Jeffery, Director at Palo Alto’s Institute For The Future, and by Jason Li, designer at Node in Barcelona, 88 Bar has a focus on technology and its impact on society.  They are less frequent posters than some of the other bloggers, and are in the same blog “neighborhood” as Adam Schokora’s 56 minus 1.  Nevertheless, Jason and Lyn have the nose for the interesting, especially where technology and culture intersect.  Follow 88 Bar (rss) if you want to catch interesting stories about values, technology, trends, and society. Twitter: @LynJ @JasonLi @IFTF

9. 6 (thinksix.net)

I hesitated to include 6 because its so new, but hey, we were new once too.  Blogger Adam Ash started the blog right after the Olympics, and has settled into an intriguing format–to follow the lives of 6 people (including himself).  He is studying Mandarin at Beida so the people he encounters are from that milieu.  Maybe its the “Real World” voyeurism.  Maybe its the cool blog name.  Maybe the promise to bring to life the thoughts and feelings of a few Chinese people that has appeal to me.  Anyway, I’ll follow this blog and I hope those 6 people turn out to be pretty interesting! Follow 6 (rss) if you’re interested in reading in-depth biographies of diverse young people in China today. Twitter: @AdamAsh

10. 56minus1 (伍拾陸 minus 壹)

In just about 6 months, Adam Schokora has launched one of the most intentionally eclectic, and unintentionally important, English China blogs in the blogosphere.  It delivers authenticity and personal expression, the core of what makes a great blog.  It also has sufficient cohesive focus to become a niche publication on creative culture, design, social media, youth, music, and “things well done” as observed from his Shanghai vantage point where he can survey the “cool” landscape with kids like Zafka Zhang (see above).  Why 56 minus 1?  Adam explains in a CityWeekend interview here.  Follow 56minus1 (rss) if you want to add creativity, music, and light to your blogroll. Twitter: @ajschokora, @56minus1

What blogs do you think belong on this list?

With all the interesting blogs about there, it was hard to come up with a top 10 list.  What do you think belongs on this list?

Update 4/22: Far West China

Josh at Xinjiang: Far West China deserves for his recent post on his favorite China blogs.  In all my tizzy of trying to work in the “white-dude” comments, I forgot to mention his inspirational post.  He included CNReviews on this list and thus caused us to want to “pay forward” the love to some other, smaller, but deserving blogs.  He’s got a concise blog list that includes the “right” major blogs as well as an interesting little blog called Hanzi Smatter that Josh characterizes as his Favorite Guilty Pleasure.  Go check his post and Hanzi Smatter while you’re at it.