My readers here on CNReviews have probably noticed that I haven’t blogged in quite some time. One of them probably wonders what happened. The other is probably hoping I’m actually dead.

Actually, I’m still around, as most of my hard-earned enemies and trolls rue whenever I pop up making the odd comment or 20 on my favorite garden of low-hanging fruit, chinaSMACK.

Oh boy, some of you are going to chafe at that one.

Heh, good.

However, the main reason I haven’t been posting much here on CNR is because I’ve been busy organizing a crack team of royal ass-kickers excellent bloggers and developing a new China blog.

But before I introduce this new blog, I want to publicly thank Elliott and CNR for having me here.

Kai and CNR, sitting in a tree…

I’ve been contributing posts to CNR for almost exactly two years now and last April, I had taken over as the main blogger and a part-time lead editor of sorts. Elliott and I had re-envisioned CNR and then rebooted it with a new design. At the time, we were getting ~30k visits a month. Today, CNR is enjoying 50k+ visits a month, which is not bad, considering that we haven’t updated recently nor have we been updating regularly over the past few months.

Even so, we had made the mistake of positioning CNR to be too much too soon, a harsh reality that set in over the subsequent months. Elliott spawned his third child and it, along with his day job, prevented him from blogging much about China. Min, through whom I first met Elliott, had retired into becoming a full-time quant, deciding that she wasn’t too keen on English blogging. As for me, as time went on, I realized that most of my posts revolved around socio-political commentary about contentious, divisive issues involving China and the Chinese. Yet CNR was to be more than just my personal opinions and rhetoric on cross-cultural politics and perceptions. The more I posted, the more my personal interests skewed what CNR professed to offer and deliver.

We had planned to scout and recruit other writers to join our little party, and over the past year, we’ve been blessed with contributions by Baoru, mollie, the BloggerInsight team (Ying, Lucas, and Kai Lukoff), Elizabeth, Aimee Barnes, voodikon,  and finally C. Custer. Unfortunately, we never managed to develop and keep the right team of people to adequately cover the many broad fields we so over-enthusiastically committed ourselves to.

And then…?

Several months ago, faced with this cognitive dissonance, I began rethinking my relationship with blogging on CNR. I had always wanted to build a reasonably “successful” blog.  By “successful”, all that meant was that the blog would be notable for something. I had also always wanted to accomplish this with a team of like-minded individuals, a group of people who would push each other, challenging each other to become better, all towards the goal of developing a notable blog. Why a blog, as opposed to, say, “curing world hunger?” Because a blog fulfills my personal interest in writing commentary, reacting, responding, and influencing the world I live in and the people I share this world with, even if it’s a wee tiny bit.

How very democratic of me, right?

I decided that CNR wasn’t the right platform for me to pursue my goals, despite my immense purely heterosexual love for Elliott. Even if I redesigned and rebooted it to be focused on the socio-political commentary I wanted to spend most of my free time writing, I would always be annoyed with the domain name. While CNReviews or “China Reviews” is perfectly fine for a blog broadly covering “People, Business, and Life in China”, but it doesn’t quite convey “socio-political commentary”. Blogging under CNR is like wearing boxers that are 10 times too large.

I’m Asian, I know my genetic limitations.

As such, I sought out fellow bloggers that shared my interest in writing socio-political commentary about issues facing and involving modern China. They also had to occupy a similar position as me on the ideological spectrum. They couldn’t be unrepentant “panda huggers”, nor unrepentant “panda bashers”. If they were, we’d end up clawing at each other’s faces too much to really cooperate. A good sense of humor wouldn’t hurt either.

Fortunately, I’ve been following the English-language China blogosphere for quite some time, and have come to know and admire quite a few people. So, I set some large steel traps where I knew they’d frequent and then waited in the bushes for the tell-tale clank of triumph.

Within days, I had caught me a Custer and an Abrams. While the Abrams is a bit more mangier than the younger Custer, both are fantastic specimens of bloggers who regularly and consistently publish critical, incisive, and nuanced commentary about modern China issues. After they agreed not to run away, I let them out of the traps and attached the collars.

CNR, compared to many other well-known small English-language China blogs, is pretty successful given the amount of traffic we pull, even when we’re sitting around twiddling our thumbs doing absolutely nothing. Of course, we’re no chinaSMACK or Shanghaiist, nor Danwei. Hell, we’re not even an ESWN. All blogs I — and we — admire and respect.

But 50,000+ visits a month is pretty decent for a small blog like CNR, and it suggests we’ve done something right. Therefore, giving up this built-in traffic up is hard, but it only makes sense for my captives and I to start a brand new blog, from square one, fresh, with a clean sheet.

And that’s exactly what we’ve done.

Entering the already crowded “English-language China blogosphere”, is china/divide, a daily updated group blog publishing social and political commentary on news and issues involving modern China written by Charles Custer, Stan Abrams, and your’s truly. We’re like the Three Amigos, except I’m not white bread. And, if everything goes according to plan, we won’t remain at three.

The first post is by Stan, titled “Goat Meat, Loose Women, and the Imperfect China Dialogue“, and it delivers. Of course, over the next few days, Custer and I will also rear our ugly heads, and henceforth, china/divide will be the place to read what much of what we think, and then proceed to disagree and hate us for it.

Please, do come and take a look.

As for CNR, given that I will be spending most of time and energies on china/divide, I’m formally saying “so long, and thanks for all the fish.” Ironically, and much to his consternation, just as Elliott’s starts a stint in Shanghai and may have more time to regularly blog on CNR, I’m seemingly abandoning him. I wouldn’t quite put it that way though. I can’t make any promises, but I don’t think this is the goodbye forever between CNR and myself, and I may guest post here in the future, especially if the subject-matter falls under CNR’s umbrella more than china/divide‘s.

But then again, which one of you actually enjoyed my non-socio-political commentary posts anyway?

See you in the divide.

I’ll first summarize Kaiser’s comments, and then share my own reactions and feelings below.  I do want to quickly say that this centripetal force of the Internet is the opposite of what I had in mind when I started CNReviews in 2007.  I expected that smart use of  internet media, even on a small niche blog like CNReviews, could create awareness and attention far greater than any person-to-person effort.  But the seeds planted by online outlets like Danwei, ESWN, Global Voices Online, Shanghaiist, even chinaSMACK, have not resulted in a great harvest of ongoing interest and understanding in China among Western readers, and instead remain a relatively small niche community serving Chinese expats and those with pre-existing interest in China.  And yes, the comment threads are indeed full of unthinking China-bashers, unthinking China defenders, self-important egomaniacs, and even sock puppets (and the China “experts” that hold them).

Meanwhile, in the real world, we continue to live apart (in geography and in mindset) as the dynamics of global capitalism increasingly tie us together.

Introduction: Kaiser Kuo

Kaiser Kuo (Twitter) moved to China in 1996 and is a rock musician in a band Chunqiu, writer, journalist, and speaker.   He most recently served as director of digital strategy for Ogilvy Digital China, where he wrote at the (now defunct) blog Ogilvy China Digital Watch.  In my opinion, he is one of the most articulate thinkers and writers about how internet and technology is shaping the most important bilateral relationship in the world today: US-China.

Will online relationships boil down to Red Guards vs. Rednecks?

Kaiser spoke on the growing awareness of the chasm between Chinese and Westerners thanks to increasing interconnectedness on the internet.  He gave a longer speech (video, 78 min)  at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, entitled “Shouting across the Chasm.”  His TedX speech was a shorter version but sounded the same themes (I will link to it when it is available).  Bob Page, at The Mercury Brief, did an exceptional job summarizing the speech.  The post, and the speech was picked up by numerous esteemed China blogs including China Herald, Useless Tree, China Digital Times, ChinaGeeks, Danwei, and Peking Duck.  Plenty of discussions have happened already around this speech.

Earthquakes happen when pressure builds up under the surface

By and large, US-China relations at a government to government level have been as healthy as it ever has been.  Last summer, during the Beijing Olympics, I recall watching George W. Bush enjoying the autumn days of his Presidency watching the US Women’s Volleyball team and thinking that China was one of the one bright spots of the presidency of George the Younger.  I (who never had a good thing to say about George W) even stuck my neck out and wrote about George Bush’s Uncharacteristically Nuanced Approach toward US-China Relations.  With Obama’s arrival 11/16 in Shanghai on his first trip to China as President (see itinerary on ForeignPolicy.com), a fairly functional relationship exists between governments.

But under the surface, according to Kaiser, at a people-to-people level, “a real crisis exists, and relations between Chinese and Anglophone Westerners are at a real low.”  To use the analogy of an earthquake, the surface looks calm, but the invisible shifting of the techtonic plates.

In the past, contact between Chinese and Americans “took place at small scale and with intermediation” often in “painfully polite settings.”  Bob Page summarized Kaiser’s contrast of the past with the present in his blog post:

“For most of the 30 years since China’s reforms began, Chinese and American civilians rarely met face-to-face in significant numbers,” Kuo says. “When encounters did take place, they were typically stage-managed events among civil, often painfully polite participants in sister city arrangements, trade delegations and cultural exchanges.

“In March 2008, in the run-up to the Olympic Games, Chinese people were curious about what the world would say about them…. But they were blindsided by negative English-language reporting. While hundreds of millions of Chinese had risen out of poverty, while the Chinese economy had grown by 10 percent annually for nearly three continuous decades, while China’s biggest cities had become forests of skyscrapers with vibrant cultural scenes, none of this was deemed newsworthy by Western news media….

“Instead, Chinese and Americans went after each other in the comment sections of news stories, blog posts, YouTube, forums and boards in an escalating people-to-people brawl that continues to this day. They fight over a litany of issues: Tibet, Taiwan, Tiananmen, trade, Internet censorship, religious freedom, Myanmar, Darfur, sanctions on Iran, carbon emissions, and so on. The first real people-to-people encounter between the world’s reigning and rising superpowers did not bode well.

What changed?  In short, English literacy in China, and the internet.  “What has happened since is two things.  One, has been the ubiquity of English language education in secondary schools in China, and the other thing that has happened is the stupendous rise of the Internet.” said Kaiser.  “In 1999, there were only 8 mm people on the Internet. Fast forward to today, we have 338 mm Internet users (in China) and in the course of 10 years, have achieved 94% penetration of broadband….this has made it possible for unmediated, large scale interaction with Westerners and Chinese.”

In this new media landscape, government-to-government relations are on the surface, while a hot, turbulent sub-surface of popular opinion continues a hidden techtonic shift.  What if a crisis were to happen?  How could popular opinion shape and limit government’s response?

Welcome to the Internet:  where your one-sided beliefs are reinforced by others just like you

Even within the West, with its tradition of free press and free speech, we see how the Internet has caused us to self-segregate into communities of similar interest and political leaning.  From Bob Page’s post:

But this is the Internet we’re talking about, which many of us believed would bring down barriers and usher in the death of distance, the good times of a global village. Instead, it has made us more fractured and tribal…. It’s also true within America, where nowadays you only read the political blogs and viewpoints of those who happen to be on your side of the political aisle.

We read what we want to read, according to Kaiser.  Those on the left read Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo, and those on the right read “whatever wacko right wing website they read.”  (Its clear where Kaiser falls on the ideological divide).  The “kumbaya” factor of the Internet is, in fact, more dead than alive.

In China, the internet “has historically been dismissed as greasy kids stuff” (e.g. internet games, internet cafes, entertainment) but is “also the emerging public sphere in Chinese life.  China has never had a public sphere for intellectuals to gather and discuss the issues of the day,” according to Kaiser.  As a result, the internet in China is extremely important for shaping popular opinion.  But the internet in China is no more enlightened than in the US.  In fact, at Chinese Blogger Conference 2008, Chinese blogger Ping Ke (平客 aka buchimifan) spoke on the need for greater rational online debate within the Chinese blogosphere.  And Roland Soong, in a speech prepared for Chinese Blogger Conference 2009 (see 1kg CNBloggerCon minisite and summary of event on GlobalTimes) and Blogfest Asia, shared the reasons why he doesn’t allow comments on the EastSouthWestNorth translation portal that he runs.  An excerpt:

I do not think it helps for me to facilitate this kind of exchange between “Red Guards versus Rednecks” (or “Chinese Fenqing (angry youth) PK Foreign Fenqing (angry youth)”).  I may want to communicate some information to people, but I am likely to encounter the kind of situation as described by Leung Man-tao (梁文道) in Southern Weekend:

在一篇一萬字的文章裏看見一句令我不滿的話，忘記剩下那部分吧，我要寫一篇兩萬字的回應來批判它。我為什麼要耐著性子看完 那篇東西呢？我為什麼要深入甚至同情地理會它的真正含義呢？它只不過是我用來表達自己的機會和藉口罷了。

In a 10,000 word essay, I came across one sentence that displeased me.  I forgot about the rest of that essay and I wrote a 20,000 word essay to criticize it.  Why should I bother to read the whole essay?  Why should I bother to delve into it or try to comprehend its true meaning?  It is merely an excuse and opportunity for me to express myself.

Indeed, I have come across someone who wrote: “I am not interested in the facts about what happened in Tibet, because I already know how to define the event.”  What is the point for providing information to people like that?  They are not interested in any information.  My own utility to them would be to provide the excuse and/or platform to rave and rant about their pre-established and immovable positions.

Spiraling toward bipolar disorder?  Toward a more resilient system of US-China relations

Unfortunately, the diagnosis of our condition is more painfully clear than the remedy.  Kaiser, blogger Roland Soong, journalist/professor Rebecca McKinnon and blogger Aimee Barnes have each shared some thoughts on how we can prevent the downward spiral that we won’t even recognize until something goes wrong.  I’ll caveat this by saying that these suggestions are in English for the English speaking audience.  Of course, there is just as much work to be done on the Chinese side, and supporting those who can influence Chinese opinion in a positive way is just as much part of the prescription of success.  It is very much a two-way relationship.  Here are Kaiser’s recommendations:

1. Cultivate personal knowledge – From Roland Soong’s post: “Knowledge is the first step. You can[not] talk about something unless you are knowledgeable about it. Why do you want to talk about that something? Because you think that the knowledge has changed your position. And that knowledge may also change your readers, especially those who form the subject of the discussion.”  Blogs are a great place to start.  For English-language readers, Kaiser mentioned several sources including Alltop China, CN Reviews, ChinaGeeks, Danwei (Danwei China mirror site) and ESWN. CNReviews had highlighted blogs that translate Chinese netizen comments and other blogs to watch in 2009.
2. Understand Chinese History – Accept the need to understand Chinese history.  Chinese current events are framed by a view of history held by elites.  Understand that view as best you can.  According to Kaiser, a place to start would be The Search for Modern China by Jonathan Spence.
3. Learn what Chinese people actually think when their defenses are down. The conversations taking place when it’s not believed ‘whitey’ is around are decidedly more nuanced.  Blogs that translate Chinese content (listed above) can be a starting point.

Rebecca MacKinnon wrote an open letter to Barack Obama advocating a people-to-people approach toward building relationships between Americans and Chinese.  I posted on an Aug 2009 conversation I had with Rebecca and excerpted from the original letter:

Just as you have used new technology to engage with the American electorate, your China policy can be greatly strengthened if you conduct a real conversation with the Chinese people. Listen as much as you talk; provide a much-needed platform for open discussion. The U.S. embassy in Beijing should build a Chinese-language website modeled after change.gov, focused not just on U.S.-China relations, but on the range of concerns and interests – from environment, to food safety, to factory safety standards, to education and real estate law — shared by ordinary Chinese and Americans. Some linguistically talented State Department employees should start blogging in Chinese. Open up the comments sections, see how the Chinese blogosphere responds, then respond to them in turn. Translate some of the Chinese conversation into English for Americans to read and react, then translate it back.

Perhaps the idea of open comments will just draw out “those shouting loudest on both sides…Red Guards and rednecks,” as Kaiser Kuo characterizes the internet.  I believe that more person-to-person efforts are complementary to and more important than an online approach.  This could potentially involve study abroad, educational tourism, volunteer tourism, sponsored events, cross-border events, and informal delegations.  The goal of online efforts should be to convert online connections into in-person connections, and take it out of the blogosphere and into the realm of real-world discussions.

Aimee Barnes comes up with a 5 point approach:

1. Including youth leaders and business influencers into the dialogue now hosted by academic and governmental elites
2. More support for business leaders in both countries to build bilateral relationships
3. More study of Mandarin among US kids and adults
4. Deeper understanding of China’s history and government among Western media
5. New “equal access” research institutions/think tanks that include more Chinese-born specialists

In my opinion, based on 2 years of following English-language Chinese blogs, mainstream media, and actively blogging on CN Reviews, I am more and more convinced that actual person-to-person contact, as opposed to online blogging and conversation, is the most important ingredient to building trust, relationships and increased understanding and mutual respect.  I suppose many of you would say “Duh, of course.”  But if we believe that the internet can be a force for evil (or divisiveness) we must also conclude that it can be a force for good (or improved mutual understanding).  In any case, the “genie can’t be put back in the box” and online discourse will continue on both sides of the Pacific.  But energy should be placed toward efforts that bring together business leaders and non-governmental leaders on issues that we both care about, and rely on material self interest as a mechanism for building bridges.  And a much heavier investment in person-to-person connections between leaders in all fields in China and US is necessary and cannot be replaced by the online discourse dominated by trolls, fenqing, panda-huggers, panda-bashers, Red Guards, and rednecks. In the meantime, your free speech is not guaranteed on the Internet, at least not on our blog.  You can go create your own blog if I don’t like what you have to say!

From written content, to community organizing

For people like Kaiser and Rebecca MacKinnon who are working on writing books, I feel a key metric of success is not just the number of books sold and the number of online references, but the number of influential people on both sides that engage in a deeper and more informed dialogue with the other side as a result of the book.  It is an exercise in community building and community organizing, rather than just the act of authorship.  The pen is mightier than the sword, but only in combination with eye-to-eye contact (or at least numerous meals and drinking together), and trust built over time.

Business partners, motivated by self-interest properly understood

In an article entitled “New Friction and Vast Agenda Awaits Obama on China Trip” in the Wall Street Journal, Ian Johnson highlights that the issues that require US-China coordination have exploded:

A decade ago, most issues discussed at China-U.S. summits were limited to three issues: human rights, nuclear nonproliferation and trade. Now, the list of topics has grown to include almost every problem facing the world, from clean energy and the war in Afghanistan to African development and fixing the world economy — all of which are expected to have a place in talks between Mr. Obama and his Chinese counterpart, President Hu Jintao.

“For the first time in the history of our relationship, global issues are at the top of the agenda,” says Kenneth Lieberthal, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington who was a special assistant on Asian affairs to former President Bill Clinton. “This is new territory for us.”

It is a change that analysts on both sides see as potentially problematic. Chinese officials and analysts note that the U.S. still has an arms and high-tech embargo on China — hardly something one does with a true partner, they say. “Obama wants us to become strategic partners or friends but we aren’t either of those,” says Yan Xuetong, a professor of international relations at Tsinghua University. “We are business partners who share material interests rather than common values.”

It is this last comment from Yan Xuetong that gives me hope and concern.  We indeed have significant material interests, from energy, environment, the monetary system…so lets start there.  With self-interest properly understood, we can build a more resilient global system between the US and China.

Lest you think that Kaiser is too distraught about our future, he claims to be optimistic about our future, and we recently had a great time on Oahu.  Here’s a picture:

I’m interested in your comments.  Even if you are a Red Guard or a Redneck!

The title sounds judgmental, but it isn’t in the least. It’s the truth and, more importantly, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. I am, of course, generalizing the China Blogger Conference and all of the varied speakers, talks, and subject-matter presented over this weekend. While these have definitely included both foreigners and matters that both indirectly and directly affect foreigners both in and outside of China, the vast majority of foreigners will find this conference largely inaccessible and very distantly relevant to them. That almost all of the talks are made in Chinese is only the first, though arguably the largest reason.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong about that, that anyone is to be blamed, and that’s just the way it is. Writing for CNReviews, I have a naked emphasis on what I write about for the predominantly foreign audience we target, an audience we reason as having some basic desire to learn more about China and the Chinese people, so they can better understand both for whatever ends they themselves may have. I have an idea of what this audience may think, how this audience might react, and how I want to influence you. I hope I’m not clearing any mystique or exposing any secrets here.

The takeaway from CNBloggerCon for our audience is that it happens, that a group of Chinese people are bringing other Chinese people together to share, discuss, and promote that which matters to them, that their ideals, ideas, and motivations are being acted upon, that they’re not the sheep too many people too often dismiss them as. Here, they talk about charity, censorship, human rights, artistic expression, professional collaboration, internet phenomenon, and driving or contributing to the continued positive development of China, both online and off. Those of us who are here to see what could be shared with foreign audience are like the Chinese who hopped online to watch Obama accept the American presidency, beholders instead of participants, more eavesdroppers than the target audience. Nevertheless, we are impressed and moved, even if we knew there was no rational reason to feel otherwise.

This is what I can tell you, what I can offer you as a lowly blogger here on behalf of a blog that seeks to bridge China with the West, in hopes that you’ll remember, be impressed, and accord due respect. I won’t tell you about the backwater poverty-stricken schools too few of you could ever find. I won’t tell you about the pseudo-celebrity Chinese Twitterati too few of you could follow. I won’t tell you about the Chinese university students aiming to create a youth-oriented print magazine too few of you could read. But I can share some reasons for expanding our mindsets and our perspectives on mainland China, the Chinese, and what they’re up to.

If you don’t need the reminder, are already impressed, and already accord due respect, then you’re ahead of the game, and you are already a good participant in this ongoing and growing global dialog. Thank you. I need you, CNR needs you…even if and as much as you don’t need us.

For more English-language coverage of the 2009 CNBloggerCon, be sure to look for updates from Jeremy Goldkorn at Danwei (China mirror) and Sky Canaves at the WSJ’s China Real Time Report.

Image credits: Former CNR blogger and Twitter Beast David Feng.

If you’re not familiar with BON, you’re not the only one. Apparently, however, it’s “a brand new, pioneering television network producing a wide range of objective English language content bringing the human side of China to homes across the Western world.  BON goes live on air in Summer 2009 in the United States.” You can read more about them here.

I’ve personally never heard of David Moser but that’s probably because I spend too little time rubbing elbows with major figures in China academia and media and waste too much of my time slumming it at chinaSMACK . Apparently, Moser has even been a host for everyone’s favorite CCTV. Either way, he seems like a nice guy.

Jeremy Goldkorn and Michael Anti, however, are both names long-time China watchers are probably familiar with. South African Goldkorn is the founder of  Danwei (Danwei.tv for those behind the GFW), one of the largest, oldest, and most influential English-language blogs covering China, updated multiple times a day with links to great reading as well as plenty of original content, including tons of excellent translations. Michael Anti is the Chinese journalist-blogger with the cool name, having worked for a number of known and reputable news organizations both domestic and foreign.

Reviewing the two part video took some time, as the videos often would not stream smoothly and happily, if at all. To help you decide if you want to try loading them up, I’ve included some of my notes from each part below the embedded videos here:

Part 1

Interesting Points:

• Goldkorn: SARS situation in 2003 and American political blogs helped inspire him to start Danwei, he felt there wasn’t enough English information available on China’s media to adequately reflect its “vibrancy and diversity”.
• Anti: China is so large that it is fragmented with influence only extending so far. “Internet is the first time in Chinese history we have a national community.”
• Anti: English blogs like Danwei and ESWN have a “two-direction effect” that benefits and “is crucial” for both English-readers and Chinese. Websites like these help the outside world better understand China and also help “make public” the Chinese voice. “If something isn’t written in English, it does not really exist in the world.”
• Anti: Bridge-blogging becoming bridge-tweeting.
• Moser: Questions the word “blog”. Is “blog” the right word? Or is “website” better because “blog” suggests “personal expression”. How should we refer to these “English blogs about China”?
• Moser: Brings up word “aggregator” and asks if ESWN’s content is Roland Soong‘s own content or he just “translates and copies” other people’s material.
• Goldkorn: “Sex scandals, people doing disgusting things” and “scandalous” BBS comments are things chinaSMACK does well.
• Anti: Reference News translates English news into Chinese to help Chinese know more of how the outside world is looking at China.
• Moser: On blogs replacing the fourth estate, discusses downside of blogs not being vetted, being “wild”.
• Goldkorn: Says blogs and newspapers can both make mistakes, vetting or not, but reputation and trust is built up over time.
• Moser: Alludes to process journalism.

English Blogs About China Mentioned:

• Danwei
• EastSouthWestNorth
• chinaSMACK
• RConversation
• Global Voices Online
• Sinosplice

Part 2

Interesting Points:

• Goldkorn: On financing Danwei, they make “some” money on advertising, “a little more” on job advertising/recruitment advertising, and make “most” of their money on research services for corporate customers.
• Goldkorn: Says most people use blogs as “loss-leaders” to build influence and reputation for other things like consulting.
• Anti: Blogs cannot depend on advertising because of possibility of being blocked.
• Moser: Suggests that English blogs have “a certain immunity” because most of the audience is English and overseas.
• Goldkorn: While Moser and Anti discuss Anti-CNN, jokes about American nationalists being scarier than their Chinese counterparts.
• Goldkorn: “So difficult when discussing China in English to get the right mix”, referring to always being criticized by someone for writing critical or complimentary pieces about China.
• Anti: On power of new technology like Twitter, Kaiser Kuo tweeted about Xinjiang riots 1 hour before Xinhua English news reported about it.
• Anti: Described NYT’s “agenda” as being “weird” for himself and many Chinese people because Chinese people come from a “propaganda society” where the media is usually used to promote or inspire people to do things, “positive media report”, but the NYT and most foreign media is mostly “negative reporting”.
• Anti: On fact-checking: “Don’t trust anything until someone denies it.”

English Blogs About China Mentioned:

• China Digital Times
• China Media Project

Weekly Review:

CHINAYOUREN Blocked

So guess what now:  I am blocked.

I am banned, prohibited, harmonized, river-crabbed. Censored, in short, by the Great FireWall of China. If you are reading my blog now and have not noticed anything strange, it is because either:

1- You are reading the blog from outside China and therefore you are not going through the GFW (Chinayouren is hosted outside China, you are on the same side of the Wall). Or else,  2- You are reading this from mainland China and you are using some means to connect anonymously and pass through the wall. Most probably a web proxy or  VPN, which is what I am using now.

So, just to get this clear: my website works normally, there is no change at all in the blog itself, since the server is out of the reach of Chinese authorities. The only thing that is happening here is that the GFW is preventing users in China to access my domain. You can read more on how this works here.

I know this was bound to happen some day, and I though it would be funny, and it would make me proud in a way, because not every blog is important enough to be censored. But no, it is not funny at all. Although I can easily connect and write using my VPN, the 50% of my readers that are based in China can not do it so easily (actually they can, but they will not bother, I know this very well because I have been in that situation before and I also got lazy with blocked blogs).

There is of course an added point that makes the GFW censorship extremely annoying: it does not officially exist.This means that there is nowhere I can go to complain, and if I do find my way to the relevant government office, nobody will admit to having blocked my content. And what is worse, I have no idea of how serious their block is, or how long it will last, which makes it very difficult to find a solution. Why? Because if I pay the money and waste the time to move to a different host, I have no guarantee that I will not be blocked there the very same week.  Or  worse still, that the censors decide to unblock my original site just when I had paid the fee for the new host…

As you’ll notice, I’ve gone ahead and reprinted the entire text of these posts for the convenience of our readers who aren’t inclined to twiddle with VPNs and proxies to get to ULN’s GFW’ed blog.

Censorship is a popular China topic, and for good reason: it affects just about everyone, and perhaps most poignantly for foreigners who have a larger frame of reference than local Chinese who have never or experienced, er, better.

GFW 1st July: Waiting for my Anonymous saviours…

So OK, I am censored, but why NOW?

I mean, I haven’t been writing anything for ages, is the Propaganda Department punishing me for being lazy? Has some big Chinese BBS  linked to me recently, is Uln hot now? As I was looking around for an answer, I found out that the Peking Duck blog was blocked more or less at the same time as mine, and it was asking the same kind of questions.

That is when I got this idea of the LIST, which I wrote on their comments. Everyone knows that GFW is unpredictable, it starts and stops and nobody ever knows why, if you don’t believe me look at this funny chronology. But this random behaviour usually affects only some websites, and never touches others. So necessarily, the guys at the GFW Control Deck are working with a number of websites that have been shortlisted beforehand.

I am quite sure of the existence of this LIST, because I noticed very precisely the moment my blog was shortlisted. It happened earlier this year with that political post that was picked by the New York Times. Since then I had strange things happening, with miniblocks now and then, a perceived slower speed loading in China, and, of course that particular Charter08 post has been blocked ever since (even as the rest of the blog remained open). Also, look at that weird comment in Chinese in that post, where the guy says I am interfering in China’s internal affairs… could be a troll. Or could be not.

Anyway, my guess is that this blog and the PKD’s block have probably nothing to do with our recent activity, but rather with the tense atmosphere in the censors office these last weeks, after the Green Dam fiasco and the Google affair. At some point someone must have said: “hey, let’s block some more sites”, and we were unfortunately the next names on the LIST. And, unlike Google, I am afraid sites speaking specifically of politics are blocked permanently, such as this one, or this one. I hardly imagine the censors taking the trouble to monitor our blogs every day to see if we are behaving better. So my guess is, both for me and for PKD, that the block is here to stay and there is no solution.

… or perhaps there is?

You might have seen this manifesto of the Anonymous Netizens,  found on the RConversation blog. They promise some action on the 1st of July.  I like the document, it is well written and, unlike other efforts, it is very clever in that it sticks to its objective and doesn’t try to change the World from zero. It doesn’t ring very Chinese to me thoughLook at these 2 extracts (but if you got time read it all):

For the freedom of the Internet, for the advancement of Internetization, and for our rights, we are going to acquaint your censorship machine with systematic sabotage and show you just how weak the claws of your censorship really are …  You are trying in vain to halt the wheels of history. Even with your technocratic reinforcements, you will not understand the Internet in the foreseeable future

….

NOBODY wants to topple your regime. We take no interest whatsoever in your archaic view of state power and your stale ideological teachings. You do not understand how your grand narrative dissipated in the face of Internetization. You do not understand why appealing to statism and nationalism no longer works. You cannot break free from your own ignorance of the Internet. Your regime is not our enemy. We are not affiliated in any way with any country or organization, and we are not waging this war on any country or organization, not even on you. YOU are waging this war on yourself. YOU are digging your own grave through corruption and antagonization.

Perhaps it is just this anarchist instinct of mine, but I find the discourse inspiring, and I hope it makes some noise in China and local netizens here get the message. Because it works well to defeat the old nationalistic shield of the Chinese government against outside critics.

Not that I think the Attack announced on the 1st July is going to change much. These guys are not really Chinese, they are the people at the 4chan bbs, you can read a bit more about them here. They have done some interesting actions before, in particular against the Scientologists, and I am curious to see what is coming on the 1st July.

But however smart the guys are in the West, I am afraid they don’t have a chance in China. It is a completely different playing ground, they have no popular support here and as far as I know their BBS in the West have no links to the Chinese ones here.  I might be wrong, but I have the feeling that this is exclusively a Western initiative, perhaps with the participation of some overseas Chinese.

The thing with Western internet activists is that they seldom realize the massive size of the Chinese internet, and its limited connections with the outside World. We will speak about this some other day, but let me just say that the Chinese internet is an enormous island within the internet, an island that we all know is there and we all now it’s big, but we have no idea of what’s inside or how to get there. Something like Greenland, perhaps.

But I am digressing. I just meant to write: keep an eye on the Anonymous Netizens on the 1st July. They will not overturn the regime, they will not break the GFW or send the Nanny to the retirement home where she belongs. But they might -they just *might* – manage to ridicule the Chinese censors and expose them enough for all the Chinese to see what a bunch of incompetents they have in that Department. And how efficiently they are destroying the image of China in the World, and causing the country to loose face by the hectare.

And then perhaps someone in that office will decide that, after all, Chinayouren is not noxious for a harmonious society. Until then, I remain, blocked.

We mentioned the Declaration of the Anonymous Netizens thing earlier this week as well and it really was quite inspiring. The English translation (or version) was also far too inspiring to have been written by the average disgruntled Chinese netizen either, so ULN’s suspicions and muted enthusiasm that it was the work of outsiders rather than insiders is fairly appropriate. I’m not so sure about there being a “LIST” of sites waiting to be blocked, but who really knows why this or that site gets blocked?

ULN elaborates on his “China internet is an island within the internet” idea with his next post:

The War of the Internets

So there you are. July 1st passed without any major incident and the famous Anonymous Netizens didn’t show up. I am as blocked as ever and the Nutty Nannies of China are still running loose on the web, unimpressed by the headless suit .

I cannot say it is a surprise, frankly the chances of anything significant happening were one in a wan*. As I said in a previous post, these anonymous Netizens are not Chinese, but Western, from the mostly American chan boards, in particular chan888 (no link here, I have enough trouble as it is with the GFW to get me the hackers as well). These guys surely had some Chinese to advise them, but the initialive looks entirely Western, and the style was very similar to their -quite succesful- attacks on Scientology.

There are at least 2 reasons why their attack on the Chinese censors was destined to be a failure: In the first place, China is not a website that you can hack, it is country, and pretty massive at that. You could manage to confuse the GFW for a while with some coordinated attacks, but that would not change the – mostly offline – internal censorship of Chinese websites, which is what really matters here.

Secondly, the kind of attacks that the Anonymous do are not applicable in China, because they are based on giving negative publicity to the victim. But this country is already such an accomplished expert in creating PR trouble for itself, and in the most prominent media in the World, that one occasional attack by hackers, no matter how succesful, would hardly make any difference.

The China Internet Isle

But there is one fundamental reason why these Western initiated internet attacks have no hope to succeed here. The internet is a very powerful tool of social mobilisation, but only through the voluntary participation of the netizens in one community. The power lies not on the web itself, nor on its pirates, but on the millions of users that get connected for a common cause.

Let me remind you here of that misunderstanding that got my blog blocked in the first place: A famous New York newspaper took me for a Chinese hero fighting for Liberty, and then the censors of China agreed with it. Following that glorious moment of Chinayouren, I got some fellow fighters offering all sorts of contributions to the cause, such as banners to hang on websites. You can see some in the comments here .

It became clear to me then the little awareness in the West of the meaning of the Chinese internet. The Chinese internet is not only the single largest national community of netizens, it is also a largely isolated island, with very few connections with the outside World compared to its size.

Partly for language reasons, partly because of the GFW, but I guess mostly because of cultural differences, the Chinese live on a parallel dimension of the web. They don’t use the facebooks, or Youtubes, or Yahoo news, or IRC chats. They have their own means to communicate on the internet, and this largely excludes interaction with people outside China.

And that is where the problem comes. It is the same situation for a company seeking to advertise itself on the Chinese internet as for a social movement who tries to push its way here: you need to be inside the island to have any impact. You need to understand the Chinese and they need to be part of your idea, and only when the wans of Chinese feel that this movement belongs to them, only then the internet can become the most terrible of weapons.

So yes, I do think the internet has still its last word to say in China. But I am pretty sure that when this happens, it will be a Chinese initiative.

*I coined this the other day. Wan is 10,000 in Chinese. And yes, I find it hilarious.

Yes, July 1st came and went and nothing happened. The gold of this post, however, is ULN’s incisive observations about China’s internet, its internet microcosm, and attempts to effect change on it from the outside. There are a lot of people who understand this, largely through their own observations and experiences in China. Rebecca MacKinnon is perhaps the most popular and credentialed of this group, in trying to dispel some of the popular misconceptions of how internet censorship is actually done in China. Unfortunately but understandably, far more people do not actually understand and ULN’s post does a good job of raising some of these nuanced points that are usually oversimplified or overlooked.

However, I’m personally not so sure the main reason the Chinese “live on a parallel dimension of the web” is cultural differences, and I don’t see ULN trying to explain what those “cultural differences” are or how they contribute to this “parallel dimension” any more than cultural differences separate the netizens of other countries from each other. Instead, I still think language is the largest factor influence the interaction (or lack of interaction) between one nation’s netizens and another’s.

Crossing the GFW (excerpted)

This week I had some interesting conversations on other blogs, mostly regarding my state of internet blockdom and the possible actions that a webmaster can take to solve this problem. I will share here some conclusions that might be of interest.

Just to make sure we don’t forget anything, I will go first over the most obvious points:

1- If you are any kind of commercial undertaking, or if you depend on your site for a living, please pay attention to what you publish. Sites in English have quite some leeway to publish political content, but the bigger you get the tighter the line will be, and any kind of political activism can get you down.

2- The worst position is when you are big enough to attract the censors attention, but small enough to be insignificant in the general scheme of the internet. Say the BBC gets blocked: this makes a lot of noise, and eventually the Chinese government feels the pressure to reopen it. Inversely, if you stay small enough, you will never be blocked regardless of what you write. When you are in the middle, like these sites, the risk is biggest.

3- Finally, if you are already blocked, you can try your luck at 9 Dongdajie, Qianmen, Beijing, as a commentator suggested (this is the address of the Beijing Public Security Bureau) or any official body of your choice. I have no experience with this, and I am very skeptical about the results, but it is not impossible that the legal system works once in a while. We have seen stranger things in China.

Getting through the block

Once you have gone through the points above and decided that none applies to you, here are the typical solutions for users to get through the Wall. There are many of them, so I will just list the most well known, such as: lists of free web proxies, ad-supported or fee-based VPNs, networks like Tor or activist software like Freegate.

I will not go over each of these because you can find lots of information on the internet already, but I have tried a few of them and they all more or less do the trick: you can open in China sites that have been blocked by the GFW. These solutions are well known to the Chinese netizens users, as you can see in this Chinese blog which has even more options, such as giving a SSH number and code to your users.

So, you might think, what’s the big deal with the Great FWall? It is full of wholes big enough for a whole horde of Mongols, like it’s always been.

You are right, and yet, the GFW is a powerful system. For anyone who had a website blocked, it is very easy to see the impact on the stats of incoming hits from China. Depending on your size and content, it can be down to a 25%, and if you remain blocked for some time, chances are most readers will not find their way back to you. My guess: a mixture of laziness, hi-tech aversion, and the excess of info flowing on the net means that a missing site is quickly forgotten, and nobody goes through the trouble of opening a proxy for you.

Another possible solution for the block is the use of RSS feeds, which are not stopped by the GFW. The problem of course, is that for people to subscribe to your feed, normally they need to find your site first, and direct searches or even linking sites that hit a reset connection will not bring them over to you, in most cases.

ULN’s fourth post touches upon some more practical aspects of how GFW blocks affect the website operators/bloggers, their audience, and shapes the mentality of internet users living under it. The GFW indeed isn’t meant to perfectly censor information as much as it is meant to discourage people from seeking that information by simply making access to that information more costly in technical knowledge, effort, or time. The GFW isn’t meant to stamp out dissent or activists or “minorities with ulterior motives”, the GFW is meant to interfere with their ability to disseminate information and assemble mass support. It plays on the fact that while the masses can be easily excited with the right leader, ideology, or cause, their attention spans are also quite short and mere curiosity is easily derailed.

ULN’s point that small websites usually go unnoticed and large websites are too big to fail be blocked for long is also pretty spot on. Unfortunately, there really isn’t an English-language China blog that is big enough or, more importantly, critical enough to Chinese internet users to qualify as being too disruptive to block for long. The Huffington Post, arguably one of the largest blogs in the world remains blocked to this day. It even seems that Danwei, the old stalwart and one of the largest English-language China blogs, was recently blocked, having been inaccessible since Friday afternoon.

So what can you do? What can you do when you don’t even know why you or anything was blocked?

Welcome to China’s internet, buy a hoody:

Hear more from ULN by subscribing to his RSS feeds: “http://www.chinayouren.com/feed” (Spanish) or “http://www.chinayouren.com/eng/feed” (English). You’ll need to copy these URLs and manually enter then into your RSS reader (i.e. Google Reader).

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!

Alright, here’s the deal: I’ve never been very fond of Chai Ling ever since I learned about her back at Cal. For those who aren’t familiar with her, she was one of the student leaders of the Tiananmen Square protests 20 years ago, elected as their “Supreme Commander” as it were. Most people who hate her, probably hate her because of her appearance on the award-winning documentary “The Gate of Heavenly Peace” where she arguably came across as a sniveling self-centered, power-hungry, emotional wreck quoted as secretly desiring bloodshed to advance her ends:

“The students kept asking, ‘What should we do next? What can we accomplish?’ I feel so sad, because how can I tell them that what we are actually hoping for is bloodshed, for the moment when the government has no choice but to brazenly butcher us. Only when the Square is awash with blood will the people of China open their eyes. Only then will they really be united. But how can I explain this to my fellow students? And what is truly sad is that some students, and famous well-connected people, are working hard to help the government, to prevent it from taking such measures. For the sake of their selfish interests and their private dealings they are trying to cause our movement to collapse and get us out of the Square before the government becomes so desperate that it takes action.”

Well, bloodshed happened.

While there’s no question that the government military is predominantly culpable for the use of deadly force, there remains significant controversy as to what degree student leaders like Chai Ling may have intentionally kept more people in harm’s way when the prospect of harm was arguably obvious. Dying for a good cause is noble and everything, but coming across as wishing harm upon your supporters is a little distasteful. What the students and workers wanted was laudable, but I’m not so keen about many of the things she did throughout the demonstrations leading up to the bloody end and thereafter.

She was kinda cute though.

So why am I writing about Chai Ling right now? Danwei kindly linked us to a June 7th article by Yvonne Abraham in the Boston Globe. In it, the writer blasts Chai Ling for using the American court system and frivolous lawsuits to squelch the makers of the aforementioned documentary, Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon. Actually, to be precise, Chai Ling is using her successful and wealthy software company, Jenzabar Inc. to sue the filmmakers’ far less financially endowed non-profit organization, Long Bow Films, with a case even the judge cautions them as unlikely to win. So far, Chai Ling has burned up over $70,000 of Long Bow’s assets in legal fees just for the latter to defend themselves against her persecution prosecution.

From the Boston Globe:

This issue was also reported by Evan Osnos in The New Yorker and Jane Macartney in the Times, both earlier in May.

“Tag” apparently refers to a meta tag, a list of keywords hidden in the HTML code of a webpage that is used to suggest to search engines how to index that webpage. If you’re not familiar with HTML or Search Engine Optimization, don’t worry, because in layman’s terms, Chai basically doesn’t want anyone searching for Jenzabar to accidentally wind up on The Long Bow Group’s webpage and, you know, see all this negative stuff about Chai Ling and Jenzabar.

Chai Ling maintains that “The Gate of Heavenly Peace” took her comments out of context or translated them incorrectly (the quote at the top of this post is the translation). Other student leaders have written to the documentary-makers and have established a website (blocked in China, naturally) defending her. It’s difficult not to suspect a conflict of interest when it comes between telling what happened (and what was said/meant) and ensuring that your fans in the West still think you were a great, peaceful, pro-democratic, anti-communist, anti-oppression leader of idealistic self-sacrificing students. Of course, that conflict of interest doesn’t necessarily mean they’re engaging in revisionism, it just means we’re reduced to a he-said she-said hearsay sort of thing, with none of us really being able to determine, with complete certainty, how “misquoted” she was.

Now that I’ve “defamed” Chai Ling, I do want to acknowledge the fact that she isn’t 100% evil. In fact, she’s done many a good thing, including making something of herself through education and hard work. In mini-Gates and mini-Buffet fashion, she’s even used the wealth she’s built up over the years to recently donate $1 million dollars (Dr. Evil reference here) as a humanitarian effort to support the advance of human rights and peaceful democracy in China. I’m all for that.

That said, I’m still not very fond of what she said before, how she’s behaved with regards to the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, and what she’s doing now.

What do you think? Is Chai Ling a nauseating hypocrite, now seeking to squelch others’ freedom of speech when it says something bad about herself? Or does she have a legal, lawful, or even moral (you know, “moral imperatives” and all that) case?

If you're lucky, you might see this screen of chinaSMACK's unofficial (official?) mascot.

For those who unfamiliar with what a DoS attack is, it basically involves a ton of computers simultaneously and repeatedly accessing a website. This artificial high traffic overwhelms the website’s server, gobbling up the server’s resources, and effectively “crowds out” real legitimate visitors. Think of it as you walking towards a magazine stand to buy a magazine only to have a crowd of people rush in front of you to grab every available copy. Unlike real people who buy the magazine to actually read it, these are essentially robots whose sole purpose is to stop you from getting a copy. The person controlling these robots simply doesn’t want you to see this magazine.

If you're unlucky, you'll see this 500 Internal Server Error or a 503 Temporarily Unavailable Error screen.

While certain people have suggested that this is chinaSMACK getting GFWed (Great Firewalled), I am not personally aware of the Chinese government censors using DoS attacks to restrict content they find objectionable. They usually just block the website’s IP or specific sensitive keywords. DoS attacks instead are usually caused by individuals with an axe to grind, a grudge, or an agenda. The easy suspect in this case might be some hypernationalistic Chinese fenqing who might think chinaSMACK portrays China in a light they do not appreciate. However, the suspect really could be anyone. Maybe a jilted but tech-savvy ex-lover? Who knows.

All we know is that the website remains inaccessible and has been down longer than it ever has before (I think). Although a bit narcissistic, it is always something of a shame when one of our “own” is subject to such censorship, intimidation, or harassment. This is especially so when the victim in this case is a Chinese national who has spent much time and money building up what many of us consider to be a great destination for learning just a wee bit more about a wee different side of China and its people. Beyond time and money, when (and if) this DoS attack ends, it will have cost chinaSMACK a ton of traffic. For a website that has climbed up to Danwei and Shanghaiist levels, that’s a huge setback.

Then again, maybe it is because chinaSMACK has grown so large that it has gotten on the radar of those who would rather see it dead.

Is this the end of chinaSMACK?

Adam J. Schokora’s 56minus1 (now officially Fifty5?) just reported on this as well.

June 4, 2009 UPDATE: After nearly a week of being inaccessible, chinaSMACK is back up, with a new post about the “massacre” of dogs in China.

The Day The Communists Took Over Shanghai

From Urbanatomy/That’s Shanghai, comes an interesting collection of English language newspaper clippings and articles from 60 years ago chronicling the fall/capture of Shanghai by Chinese Communist forces. Soon after, Hong Kong ascended to glory.

The occupation has so far taken place under unexpected conditions of order and correctness. Above all, Shanghai had feared that the intermediate period might give rise to riots and pillaging by mobs of the licentious soldiery and by refugees. The speed of the advance, however, dispelled these fears. One of the rare skirmishes in the city centre broke out at the Park Hotel: the previous night, a handful of Nationalist soldiers, whose conduct at the front had earned them the title of national heroes, had been guests of honour at a Propaganda Committee banquet with Chinese wine and dancers. Surprised at dawn while still in the ladies’ company, they decided to die a hero’s death, which they accomplished quite properly, despite being improperly dressed.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. You like the History Channel.
2. After 60 years, Shanghai is largely as big and bad as it used to be…before the Communists. We win!

Chinese And Americans Are “Both Brash, Arrogant People From Empire Countries”

Japan Probe is annoyed by Newsweek Editor Rana Foroohar’s post, “Japan: The World’s Worst Economy“, declaring her unfavorable view of Japan to be tied to her favorable view of China.

I must say that while I love the Japanese aesthetic, as well as the country’s art and music, I wasn’t sorry to leave last week. This probably says more about me than the Japanese, but I had a constant, subtle feeling of being an awkward gaijin always on the verge of making some etiquette error. I find that culturally, I’m much more comfortable in China. I’m now in the Pearl River Delta area, aka The World’s Factory. Yesterday, I interviewed a bunch of students at Sun-Yat Sen University in Guangzhou, and when I asked one of the students her impressions of the Japanese, she said that she felt they had a lot of rules, and that she didn’t know how to follow them. It put me in mind once again of the similarities in character between Americans and Chinese. Despite our obvious political differences, we are both generally brash, arrogant people from big empire countries, and on the upside, have fewer barriers to movement within our societies than either Japan or Europe.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. You’re a brash, arrogant American who resents being likened to the Chinese.
2. You’re a brash, arrogant Chinese who resents being likened to the Americans.

All The Stuff The Chinese Censors Don’t Want Their Own To Know

Danwei shares with us a neat little trick you can use on Google (or Baidu, if support evil) to find BBS discussion forum topics that have been closed, thereby preventing more people from replying to them with comments and ensuring that they soon get “buried” by other topics. Of the tools forum moderators can use, this is slightly less definitive than an outright deletion of the topic, but still considerably devious. Of course, some topics might deserve being closed down but what we’re looking for to aggravate ourselves are those that were squelched purely for political reasons.

The search is for the string “Comments have been closed” on the Netease news portal, and the results returned are all controversial issues that are the subject of heated discussion in other venues.

The news stories in the above screen shot are:

• Sichuan calculates 5,335 students dead or missing from the Wenchuan Earthquake
• Corruption Prevention Bureau: Some officials are unclear about the problem of taking overseas holidays using public funds
• Foreign Ministry responds to US president’s China-related remarks concerning “World Press Freedom Day”
• Deng Yujiao’s mother suddenly dismisses her lawyer

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. You’re curious about what subjects the mods at various mainland Chinese BBS forums find unacceptable enough to close down…and you can read Chinese.

When Foreigners Get Wrongly Blamed In China…Skip Town…Immediately

If you’re doing business in China and you haven’t yet discovered, read, or subscribed to China Law Blog (but somehow us), what the hell are you doing? This week, Dan shared a most harrowing story of them advising the foreign half of a Joint Venture to immediately skip town when it became apparent that they’d possibly get sued by some local Chinese. There’s a lot more to the story, of course, but you’ll just have to read it for yourself. It’s a nail-biter.

Young Chinese Child falls from a window in a room in which an American employee of our client is one of the few adults. Child is very badly hurt. Very badly. It now appears his injuries will probably not be permanent, but he also may be in recovery for a year. His medical expenses by US standards were fairly low, but they are astronomical by Chinese standards, particularly for this less than large city. A day later, the parents of the child come with a lawyer to tell this employee that they want six figures (in US dollars, not RMB) from him and from his employer for the injuries that have befallen their child. They also go to the police and make the same request of this employee and his American employer.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. The children of your local Chinese staff regularly play in your workplace.
2. Your workplace is several floors up.
3. Your workplace has open windows.
4. Children fall out of your open windows.
5. You’re a foreigner.

We Remember Tiananmen 1989 Because We Like Chinese People More Than Venezuelans

Rob from the Black and White Cat blog that gets updated every once in a blue moon reminds the world (or those passing by his little corner of it…which should include you now) of a massacre that took place 20 years ago, not of students and workers in China, but of the protesting poor in Venezuela. So why is this massacre, which seemingly claimed as many lives as Tiananmen did, not so well-known and well-remembered in popular consciousness?

The hopes and fears of spring, 1989, and their bloody end in June will remain forever seared into the memories of those who saw the events first hand, or watched with horror from a distance on our television screens.

But there was another massacre in 1989; one that few in the English-speaking world have even heard of. In February that year, Venezuelans rose up against a massive rise in fuel prices, part of a package of neoliberal reforms that were the straw that broke the camel’s back. The poor protested, rioted and looted, seizing the food and goods that had been denied them and the complacent middle classes and rich took for granted. The uprising became known as the Caracazo and it would turn out to be one of the most significant events of the late 20th Century.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. You can’t get enough Tiananmen!
2. You’ve had enough of Tiananmen!
3. “Which movements, rebellions and massacres we choose to remember, and which to forget, say more about ourselves than about reality itself.”

Bonus! Chinese Are Not Westernizing, They’re South Koreanizing

If you haven’t read it yet (which is incredible given how many times it was linked to this week), go read John Pomfret’s recent post explaining “Why China Won’t Do More With North Korea.” In it, he offers six things that could happen and weigh on China’s mind were North Korea to collapse. They range from very real to slightly (slightly) paranoid.

First, there’s a silly assumption in Washington that our interests (no nukes in North Korea) are the same as China’s. But they’re not. China’s first interest in North Korea is making sure the Kim regime doesn’t collapse. China’s second interest? Making sure the Kim regime doesn’t collapse. From Beijing’s perspective, nukes in North Korea rank somewhere around 10th.

The comments are also a hoot.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. A nuclear North Korea frightens you and you’re pissed that China isn’t exactly on your side.
2. What? The Chinese aren’t westernizing? Wait a minute…

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!