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.

Rumors of Censorship Persist

There have been quite a few reports commenting at length on 2012 pandering to Chinese audiences, making the Chinese out to be the saviors of humanity, and thus escaping China’s censors. Interestingly, there are rumors amongst Chinese that the movie they’re seeing is still edited, that scenes involving flooding of China (one specifically being Tiananmen Square) were cut. Having seen the movie in a Chinese theatre, I can attest to several scenes that looked tampered with, where dialogue seemed to jump, but I’m not sure if those were just bad edits by the filmmakers. Therefore, I can’t confirm the validity of those rumors and suspect them to be just that: rumors. That, however, is what’s so interesting and says tons about mainland Chinese self-awareness, that they may be bitter enough with their own censors that they’ll propagate, believe, and perpetuate such rumors. I’m with them. I almost wanted to return my ticket if I was paying to see an incomplete film. Principles, man, principles!

Pandering to Chinese Audiences

Rumors of censorship aside, the other big issue is the aforementioned “pandering” to Chinese audiences, the alleged portrayal of Chinese greatness and benevolence. Uh what? Did we watch the same movie? I didn’t see squat that made China look good. Let me address the big plot points these reports mention:

‘The task would be impossible if given to any other nation.”

I didn’t see Americans “exclam[ing] that entrusting the Chinese to build [the arks] is the wisest decision“. I saw business as usual, that being China continuing to be the world’s factory. It’s not so much the wisest decision as the obvious decision. It wasn’t China being the “savior to the world, prying it from the edge of impending doom,” it’s just that China is the only nation with enough man-power to possibly build humanity-saving arks in under two years. Who else would you give the project to if you needed tons of labor, secrecy, and expediency? The United Auto Workers union? A Chinese even quipped, “Wait, I thought Americans wouldn’t trust Chinese product quality? Why would they have us build them?” OMG, they used lead paint in these arks! The Chinese are waging chemical warfare against us even in the end of days!

The People’s Liberation Army descends from the skies to offer help to Americans

I didn’t see the People’s Liberation Army helicopter dropping down to offer help. I saw it landing only to pick up those who possessed the one billion euro green boarding pass, as agreed, and no one else. Sure, he saluted, but that’s what soldiers do. If your “400-seat threater broke into a full-house applause“, believe me, it had little to do with how the movie positively portrayed the Chinese and everything to do with simply seeing your country and people making an appearance in a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster. Don’t forget, that saluting PLA officer (who, by the way, spoke remarkably American English) took the rich fat Russian and his fat twin sons but then proceeded to leave the “American survivors” to freeze to their deaths in the freakin’ Himalayas! Yeah! Go China!

China among the first nations to save those poor refugees

I didn’t see China as “among the first nations to open the gates” of its ark towards the end of the movie “to admit more refugees” (aka, the rich bastards whose own scheduled Ark #3 was damaged by a collapsed roof during the latest tremor and thus rendered unusable). We don’t even know if China had its own ark, as it seemed to be only a contingent of the people and nations aboard one of the eight arks headed by and represented by one of the G-8 nations. For all we know, the Chinese in that group of nations on that ark could’ve said, “Hell no! You crazy?!? Don’t open the gates!” but were nevertheless overruled by the others. It wasn’t a benevolent “China” that proactively did the compassionate thing versus a refusing selfish “America”, it was general human compassion winning over general selfish self-preservation. Heck, it was a black American who played the role of humanity’s conscience, was it not?

Seriously, what else was there in 2012 that could be misconstrued as being pro-China? Nothing really. In fact, the usual Hollywood romanticized ascetic Tibetan Buddhist monks probably got more screen time than the Chinese. Of course, I don’t think there were any egregious portrayals of China and the Chinese (at least on the surface, and a Tibetan grandma chopping off a chicken’s head off-screen for dinner doesn’t count, PETA) but what’s all this nonsense about 2012 praising or pandering to Chinese audiences? Give me a break. Anyone, Chinese or otherwise, presenting this movie as “pro-China” is egotistically reading way too much into an otherwise dumb but dazzling movie. Sorry.

Still Worth Watching

That said, Roland Emmerich’s 2012 is still  marginally better than, say, Alex Proyas’ Knowing. Both are 2009 films about the end of the world but only the latter descended into preachy pseudo-religious pseudo-science (yeah). The former just remains steadfastly focused on delivering edge-of-your-seat digitally-generated calamities with a half-hearted reminder that 1) life isn’t fair, and 2) who gets to live on says something about us as a society. Oh, and the kids in the latter were a lot more annoying.

2012 is about 2 hours and 40 minutes long, available in mainland China theatres in English with Chinese subtitles. Note that there are several portions of the movie where the characters speak other foreign languages, which are subtitled in Chinese but not English. Despite the cliched plot, as a special FX movie, 2012 is still worth plopping down some cash to enjoy on the big screen of a cinema.

Trailers and Previews:

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!

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

The Players

From oldest to newest…

EastSouthWestNorth

EastSouthWestNorth is the personal blog of Hong-Kong-based Roland Soong and the oldest — even most influential — blog of this bunch. It is also the simplest, a no-frills affair cobbled together and maintained with arcane late 1990s Microsoft Frontpage 5.0 desktop software. While many of Soong’s translated news articles draw heavily from Hong Kong media sources, Soong has a wonderful habit of occasionally diving head first into the deep end of major incidents, collecting — and contrasting — the reporting from sources around the world. He’s also not afraid to tackle underreported subjects either. As a statistician by training and trade, Soong’s blog also regularly features translated poll and survey results about all manner of topics, a quick way to gauge what people (often Chinese, Hong Kong, or Taiwanese) feel about something or another, provided you’re conscious of how such polls work and the most they can reveal. Unlike most blogs, ESWN does not allow reader comments, which is maddening for readers wishing to discuss the topics he covers but nonetheless a conscious decision by a Soong that doesn’t want to worry about criticism. Updated daily.

Global Voices Online China

Global Voices Online is a massive blog with hundreds of volunteer bloggers publishing reports and translations from multiple countries, in multiple languages, and a self-proclaimed “emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media.” It is part of the non-profit organization Stitching Global Voices, founded by Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman. GVO’s China section itself has several different contributors reporting on different issues, providing not just background and summaries but also translations of opinions and perspectives from Chinese bloggers and other Chinese netizens. Updated multiple times per week.

chinaSMACK

chinaSMACK popped onto the scene a little over a year ago, ostensibly created by a young Shanghainese girl named Fauna. Along with a small army of irregular contributors, chinaSMACK translates internet posts and topics that have become popular on China’s major discussion forums like Tianya, Mop, NetEase, Sina, etc. Most of these topics are social or cultural in nature, often shocking, scandalous, or silly and generally always entertaining to behold. One thing that makes chinaSMACK somewhat unique — even popular — is their aversion to strongly political subjects, something most blogs about China revel in. Another thing is a their strong emphasis on including translations of Chinese netizen reactions and comments with their translations of the original posts or news they’re reporting, even more so than GVO above. They even have a special glossary defining common Chinese internet memes, slang, and expressions. The grand scheme? To give non-Chinese readers a glimpse into what many Chinese netizens find interesting, what they’re talking about, and how many of them behave…for better or for worse. Updated daily.

ChinaHush

ChinaHush was started by a Chinese-American guy named Key nearly a year ago and was quickly derided by many as a shameless copy-cat of chinaSMACK in too many ways ranging from its name and design to its content and self-professed mission. However, there’s certainly more than enough interesting content coming out of China’s internet space for there to be more than one chinaSMACK, and ChinaHush aims to establish itself in that niche. Like chinaSMACK, ChinaHush reports on popular Chinese internet stories, minus the consistent inclusion of translated Chinese netizen comments. More impressively, ChinaHush posts ever so slightly more often than chinaSMACK. For us selfish readers of both sites, the best scenario is for each site to cover the material the other one misses. Can ChinaHush get out from under chinaSMACK’s shadow? Only time will tell, and Key’s consistent postings and continued efforts to differentiate from the latter will only help. Updated daily.

China News Wrap

China News Wrap appeared at the start of this year with its early posts being translations of headlines on the front page of major mainland China newspapers (similar to Danwei, which can be accessed behind the GFW here), publications, or news websites. It soon evolved into each post being translations, or sometimes summaries, of the individual Chinese articles themselves. There’s not much information about who runs the website except that it may be a certain Marc Howe in or from Australia. Most of the selected articles are skewed towards international economics and politics though there are some social and human-interest articles as well. Updated multiple times per week.

The Awards

Now that you’re familiar with the main contenders, we’ve got a few random awards to give out, partly to honor (or gently rib) these websites and partly to give you, dear reader, some more interesting information and commentary.

Most Prolific – EastSouthWestNorth

Roland Soong is a veritable one man juggernaut, generally translating  more original Chinese content into English than any of the other blogs listed here. In fact, he probably publishes more content overall, and has been doing so longer than all the rest of these blogs combined. Given ESWN’s bare bones design and atypical blogging format, however, it can be a bit difficult keeping tabs on all the content he hemorrhages nearly daily if you’re relying on an RSS subscription. The reason is because much of his content is placed on a rolling homepage that isn’t syndicated to RSS. Fortunately, a CNR reader previously set up a Page2RSS feed that scrapes ESWN’s content and syndicates it via RSS, albeit with a lengthy delay. Still beats visiting the site constantly.

Most Lively Community – chinaSMACK

Of all the websites here, chinaSMACK owns the rest when it comes to reader participation and comments. Not only does their content almost always include translated Chinese netizen comments, each of their posts gets an avalanche of comments from their visitors. On average, a post of their’s will quickly accumulate up to 50-80 comments within the first couple of days while their most controversial posts will easily hit 300-400-500 comments as their readers argue, debate, or troll each other. No one comments at China News Wrap, those who would like to can’t at ESWN, and though they started only a few months after chinaSMACK, ChinaHush only manages a couple comments per post on average. One caveat though, chinaSMACK’s comment section is as lively as it is often demoralizing.

Most Investigative – EastSouthWestNorth

This category because everyone has their own opinion on what deserves further attention and digging. To be clear, none of these websites do any “investigative journalism” in the traditional sense, as they’re not journalists out in the field traveling and interviewing subjects of interest. They’re just bloggers reporting on what they see and can find on the internet, piecing things together into a coherent and hopefully clearer picture for their readers. With perhaps the exception of China News Wrap, all of these blogs have had their moments revisiting a story or posting a follow-up, but prolific ESWN wins this award for the sheer amount of information Soong can collate when he sinks his incisors into something. Just take a look at his coverage on the recent Urumqi riots or the infamous Edisen Chen Sexy Photos Gate.

Best Designed – chinaSMACK

Ah, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and this beholder (with two eyes, not one large one and many smaller ones on tentacle stalks) has to bestow this award upon chinaSMACK, despite the somewhat garish exploitation of hot pink. Of course, that hot pink has also rightfully defined chinaSMACK’s brand (along with 囧) and, while some parts of their website still feature too much of it, the website overall is tastefully balanced with dark and light grays. More importantly, an obvious amount of effort was put into the design so that images and text all have their place in a logical, coherent whole. We’ve even taken cues from them here on CNR. The design isn’t perfect, but its good enough to beat the rest of these sites…though just barely so over the cool pastels and fancy satellite map eye candy of Global Voices Online. Just barely.

Worst Designed – ChinaHush

No offense to Key, but ChinaHush edges out ESWN for this dubious award. Why? Because there’s a difference between trying and failing and not trying at all. ESWN is the latter. Originally, ChinaHush looked like a cheap shanzhai version of chinaSMACK, but with some blunt prodding (by me over e-mail to Key), the design has changed with substantial differentiation, albeit with little overall aesthetic improvement. Some main culprits include: its the harsh color contrasts (you think hot pink is bad, try blocks of black and white ), the distorted or improperly resized images, the clunky featured content slideshow on the sidebar, and the general in-cohesiveness of the overall layout and design. Oh sure, I’m being mean, but I’m also pushing Key to improve it for ChinaHush’s own long-term benefit.

Most Unreliable Website – chinaSMACK

Whether it is due to its own popularity, external hacking attacks by enemies, or some mysterious technical reason, chinaSMACK is too often bogged down or outright inaccessible. YMMV but, these days, not a week goes by without an attempted visit to chinaSMACK resulting in several 500 Internal Server Error or 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable messages being thrown back in my face. This is a big problem and one it needs to take seriously because it hurts everything they’ve accomplished so far. A pretty design is useless when the page won’t load and a lively community isn’t so lively when its members can’t post their comments.

Most Advertising – chinaSMACK

I’m generally not opposed to websites having advertisements, as long as the ads don’t pop-up or take over my screen. After all, they’re offering free information, entertainment, or services and they deserve to get some compensation for their hard work. We have ads on CNR too. That said, ads still take up real estate and can sometimes be distracting. chinaSMACK and ChinaHush have the most advertising spots of this bunch. ChinaHush’s off-center 728×90 Leaderboard ad at the top of its page is pretty annoying (mostly because it stands out), but it is nothing compared to chinaSMACK’s sidebar-topping triangle of doom, especially when all three show the same advertiser (for me, it’s often Ctrip).

Most Scandalous – chinaSMACK

This was a tough call between chinaSMACK, ChinaHush, and ESWN. ChinaHush was quickly ruled out simply because its too much an emulation of chinaSMACK with very similar content but lacking the distinction of being first to the game. That left chinaSMACK and ESWN. Neither website shies away from featuring controversial content including salacious or grotesquely violent images, and while both sites also feature less shocking content, chinaSMACK gets the edge simply because ESWN dilutes its shocking content more with non-shocking news articles and poll numbers. chinaSMACK has, by some measures, toned down over time, particularly with content including nudity, but the scandalousness of its commenter community somewhat compensates for that. Oh, and they even have an online personals service now. ‘Nuff said!

Are we missing any China blogs that emphasize English translation of original Chinese content? Have a good idea for an award? Let us know in the comments below!

From The Huffington Post comes a good piece by Alexander Davenport that we’ve reprinted in full below  (interrupted by my comments) for the benefit of our Chinese readers behind the GFW for which The Huffington Post website is blocked:

Fair and Balanced: Urumqi Vs. Lhasa

When violence rocked Lhasa in April 2008, the Western media had a field day. For weeks, American news outlets reported on the violence and the subsequent Chinese response. Despite the rather low death toll (19 people), political leaders across the Western political spectrum called for sanctions, an Olympic boycott, and more. Protests that followed the path of the Olympic torch were given added vigor and scrupulous press coverage.

After the recent deaths of hundreds of Hans and Uighurs in Urumqi however, many media outlets covered the case and then quickly moved on. Even articles from the predictably sino-phobic New York Times have dwindled just two weeks after the riots and have lacked the anti-China vitriol that pervaded the Tibet reporting last year. And just days after the violence, the rioting in Xinjiang was moved out of the spotlight on CNN.com, NYtimes.com, Washingtonpost.com and Reuters.

This is puzzling. From a purely superficial view, the two instances are intriguingly similar: both involve disgruntled ethnic minorities attacking Han migrants and instigating widespread rioting. Moreover, American press was predisposed to run away with the story as the Xinjiang riots fit perfectly into the predictable, tired narrative that of the PRC as a ruthless, bloody oppressor. To be sure, the circumstances and context of the protests were different and the PRC has been a less than benevolent ruler of its border regions. This, however, does not wholly explain the differing press coverage. Why does rioting in Lhasa generate more interest than rioting in Urumqi?

I think he answers at least part of his own question with his first introductory paragraph: The Olympics. One key difference between the 2008 Lhasa riots and the 2009 Urumqi riots was that 2008 was China’s big Olympic year, whereas 2009 is not. While China was doing everything it could to prove something (or show off) to the world, it is human nature for others to resist it. This includes going so far as tempering and humbling China’s “moment”, bringing it down a notch to remind the Chinese, others, and themselves of China’s flaws, weaknesses, and dirt. Lhasa got more press coverage and spawned more reactions than Urumqi partly because many parties had an interest in making statements about China while everyone cared to watch China. Not surprising, is it?

While it is certain that China has become much more sophisticated in its engagement of the press since Lhasa, this does not explain away the American media’s reaction to the Xinjiang riots. It is possible that the press is predisposed to report about the Tibetans and predisposed against reporting about the Uighurs given the underlying cultural attitudes towards both people in America.

For starters, Tibet is romanticized in American popular culture. Certainly, the Tibetan cause is worthy of attention and concern. But let’s be completely frank here: there are millions of oppressed minorities across the globe. Few of them have Green Day play benefit concerts, Richard Gere as a spokesman, and near universal notoriety and support across college campuses. Simply put, Americans are besotted with the vision of Tibet as an idyllic land of monks and nirvana.

The Uighurs on the other hand, do not have a charismatic Nobel laureate leader, a Hollywood following, nor a political support network. Moreover, the Uighurs are — dare I say it — Muslim. And as a restive Muslim minority with a streak of violent separatist attacks, Uighurs are unlikely to engender much political goodwill on Capitol Hill or from the Washington Post editorial page in a post-9/11 world. A random sampling of American reader comments on Xinjiang articles recently shows an antipathy towards the Uighur cause as a result of its conflation with anti-American terrorist organizations. Whether America’s less than balanced press coverage stems from this sentiment (or perhaps vice versa) is unclear. What is clear, however, is that American media has deemed rioting Tibetans a more worthy topic of sustained coverage than rioting Uighurs.

Right, the ascetic Tibetan Buddhists are more cuddly than terrorist Muslims dichotomy. To Davenport’s credit, this was much better presented than the Glen Greenwald of Salon‘s frightening geopolitical lamentation that the Uighur’s “Muslimness” got in the way of “the opportunity they present to undermine the Chinese government.”

The secular pseudo-Christian Western world is indeed less sympathetic to the Muslims. It is also indeed far too starry-eyed about Tibet. For Americans, for both, perhaps more so.

To be sure, the discrepancy in the reporting on both incidents is not in and of itself a cause for concern. After all, American media attempts to provide what the American public demands — no matter how warped the beliefs that fuel these demands are. It does, however, bear examining precisely why we feel the way we do towards one minority group but not the other — perhaps equally as important but slightly less photogenic — group. We should be sure that given the finger wagging approach commonly used by Americans towards China in regards to minority human rights, we have founded these beliefs on accurate and balanced information, not ingrained cultural stereotypes nor media misrepresentations. Whether our fourth estate is up to the task remains to be seen.

Wait, did he just suggest that Uighurs are “slightly less photogenic” than Tibetans? LoL…what the…why? Are we talking about the people themselves or the settings (you know, mosques vs. temples)?

Subjective declarations of photographic attractiveness aside, Davenport’s big point is worth highlighting:

1. Are Americans and the West being hypocrites?
2. Are Americans and the West biased, selective in what they believe, support, and fight for?
3. Has the press, as the fourth estate, done its job in presenting “accurate and balanced information”?
4. Or has it merely fed and reinforced the “ingrained cultural stereotypes” and “media misrepresentations”?

Davenport’s piece isn’t unique, as similar articles with similar sentiments have been written by others both in the traditional media and on the web. However, the best way to appreciate it is to compare it to another piece also recently published on The Huffington Post, this time written by a certain Alison Kilkenny.  The subject is again about the Urumqi riots and, like Mr. Davenport’s post above, it argues that the Western media didn’t pay enough attention to the Urumqi riots. The reason it offers, however, is slightly different: The West cares but, you know, they just didn’t hear enough of the Uighurs’ side of things. If only they knew…

If Only the Uighurs had Twitter

More than 4,000 Uyghurs have been arrested by the Chinese government since July 5. Almost 200 have been killed. Thousands have been injured. This violence follows the pattern of arbitrary detention, imprisonment, torture and execution that has enraged Westerners when it has occurred in places like Iran. Yet there is little attention being paid to the suppression of the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority, in the Western media.

It strikes me as either suspicious or intellectually dishonest that Alison rattles off these numbers as fact with nary a single citation or link to where she got these numbers. It isn’t as if she’s an old media writer who doesn’t know what hyperlinks are, she just selectively picks and chooses which statements she feels obligated to substantiate while leaving the others as indisputable assertions of fact (see below). Apparently she felt fine implying in context that only Uighurs were arrested, killed, and injured in her opening paragraph, when reports clearly indicate otherwise (even better Urumqi riot coverage here, here, and here).

Despite the vomit gargling in my throat, I’ll go ahead and reprint the rest of Alison’s article in its entirety for consistency and, again, for the benefit (in this case, perhaps intelligence-deflating detriment) of our GFW-blocked readers in China. Emphases are all mine, and again interspersed with my comments:

The Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) is now concerned that mass executions of Uyghurs will soon be carried out, as promised by Chinese officials.

You mean like how public prosecutors seek the death penalty against criminals who do really, really horrible things?

“We believe that the Chinese government’s spin has influenced the reaction of the world community … causing Uyghur repression to receive less attention than events such as the suppression of the Iranian people,” wrote Amy Reger, a researcher at UHRP, during our email correspondence. The Chinese government has also been successful in cutting access to cell phones and the Internet, including Twitter. The government did this “in order to prevent a spread of citizen journalism such as that which occurred in Iran. We believe that, had this not occurred, news of the mass killing of Uyghurs by Chinese security forces may have been able to reach the outside world more effectively,” Reger added.

Others like Davenport suggest the reaction of the world community had something to do with the Uighurs being Muslim, but Amy Reger of the “Uyghur Human Rights Project” believes the world community bought all that Chinese government “spin.” Last I checked, pretty much no one except mainland Chinese people bought the Chinese government’s statements. And even amongst the Chinese, they’re generally pretty skeptical (though like most, pretty willing to buy into whatever fits into their biases).

I do think there’s a point about cell phones, internet, and Twitter being cut. The thing is, if we use last year’s Lhasa riots as a guide, there’s a good chance the citizen journalism that would’ve come out would more corroborate Uighur violence on Hans (and apparently themselves too) than the other way around, just as citizen journalists and actual journalists in Tibet last year came out tempering the Western media and community’s imbalanced presentation of Tibetan violence in Lhasa.

UHRP is also concerned that there have been no reported arrests of Han Chinese who have reportedly beaten and killed Uyghurs in two days of violence in Urumchi. In early July, Han Chinese residents of Urumchi took to the streets with clubs, sticks and other weapons to seek revenge on Uyghurs who had injured and killed Chinese people on the previous day. “We condemn the killings and injuries of Han Chinese people. However, we also believe that large numbers of Uyghurs were killed and injured on July 6 and 7, and their deaths have not been reported,” says Reger.

No reported arrests of Han Chinese? Either we’re not reading the same reports or there’s a lot of selective reading going on. The reports I’ve read from the mainstream media (again, great collection of reports here, here, and here) seem to all include Uighur death tolls and arrests that implicitly include Han Chinese though largely Uighur. Is it really that surprising that those suspected of starting the violence get arrested?

Reger and UHRP accuse the Chinese government of engaging in spin by providing only images of violence instigated by Uyghurs against Han Chinese, in an effort to “fan the flames of nationalism and divert attention from the serious, underlying grievances that drove Uyghurs to protest, at first peacefully.” Reger cautions Western journalists to critically analyze any information given to them by the Chinese government and media as it is likely state propaganda.

State propaganda? From the Chinese government? No way! Okay, while I doubt any Western journalist needs to be reminded to “critically analyze” the information the Chinese government and media feeds it, I’ll accept this as good general advice…er, caution.

But here’s the thing: I’m not entirely sure Amy Reger of “Uighur Human Rights Project” is some neutral party with a monopoly on the truth either. We know the Chinese government in full tilt information management mode is shameless. We’ve come to expect it. It is so shameless, and blatantly so, that we want to be on the “other” side of it.

It’s just disappointing to see that other side be just as shameless.

The two trends of Uyghur coverage in the media are exclusion and suppression. In addition to the deaths of Uyghur activists being almost completely whitewashed from the news,…

Completely whitewashed? Are you serious? One of the big surprises of the entire Urumqi riot news event was just how quickly the Chinese government came out and reported Uighur deaths both domestically and abroad. It was so unexpected, skeptics the world over instantly wondered if it was just an excuse to also report how many Han deaths there were in comparison, you know, to “fan the flames of nationalism.”

…the Chinese government is publicly calling for the censorship and suppression of Uyghur activists. Most recently, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei has called for the U.S. government to “restrict the activities” of Uyghur activist Rebiya Kadeer. The Chinese government blames Kadeer for instigating the violence in one of its most volatile regions, Xinjiang. Kadeer is a human rights activist who spent five years in jail in China and now lives near Washington, and has accused the Chinese government of repressing Uyghurs, destroying their culture and curbing their religious freedom.

The political pressure from Beijing isn’t limited to heads of states. Richard Moore, head of the Melbourne International Film Festival, said two Chinese directors have boycotted Australia’s biggest film festival over the screening of a documentary about Kadeer. The directors pulled their films after Moore ignored political pressure from Beijing. “It makes me feel angry, annoyed and irritated all at the same time, that they would try to interfere with our programme for blatantly political ends,” Moore told the AFP news agency.

Reger stresses that subdued media coverage stifles the possibility of western solidarity movements. It’s not that Americans don’t care about Uyghurs. They just don’t hear about the systematic slaughter of the Uyghur people by the Chinese government.

Ugh, “solidarity movements.” I’m having horrifying flashbacks of Berkeley already…

And “systematic slaughter” of Uighurs? Must be like the picture above, right? Geez…do I really need to say something about this or can I trust that anyone with two brain cells to rub together will scoff with me?

“We ask the Chinese government to allow journalists access to East Turkestan and Uyghurs without any conditions to investigate the unrest in Urumchi and its aftermath.

Somehow I don’t think this request of the Chinese government is going to get approved when you refer to Xinjiang as East Turkestan. But then again, Reger and the UHRP isn’t really “asking” the Chinese government as much as they’re just putting out their platform and — dare I say it — “spin“.

This access to East Turkestan will be critical in the coming days as looming executions of Uyghurs on political charges come ever nearer.” (Urumchi Party Secretary Li Zhi said at a press conference on July 8 that authorities would use the death penalty for crimes connected to events on July 5. “To those who have committed crimes with cruel means, we will execute them.”)

Arguments over capital punishment aside, I can’t say I find a country willing to use the death penalty on “those who have committed crimes with cruel means” to be that unimaginable. The key phrase here would be “with cruel means.” I think malevolently running around throwing people to the ground and then bashing their heads open sounds pretty cruel, what about you?

Reger adds, “We fear that a number of Uyghurs are going to be executed unnoticed by the world. In order to prevent such state-sanctioned killing we require the eyes of the world’s media and the world’s governments to remain on East Turkestan and to speak out against a further abuse of the Uyghur people’s human rights.”

The United States government could aid human rights activists by flexing its diplomatic muscle and exerting pressure on the Chinese government to opens its borders to foreign journalists. Only with the presence of a free and open press can a proper western solidarity movement form for the repressed Uyghur people.

Fin.

Eh, I have nothing against human rights and repressed Uighur people. But I do have something against using the same shameless propaganda and spin one hypocritically accuses the Chinese government for. At the very least, don’t be so blatantly obvious about it.

What do you think? Was Western media coverage of Urumqi less than Lhasa? Was it because Uighurs are Muslim? Was it because the evil Chinese government successfully prevented the rest of the world from finding out about all its “systematic slaughter”? Was it because the West actually just doesn’t care as much?

Images: Courtesy of ESWN and wherever Soong got them from.

ESWN overlord Roland Soong translated several Chinese news reports surrounding a video that has been spreading in China. The video features a Chinese schoolgirl allowing her breasts to be kneaded by several surrounding bakers schoolboys, and the entire controversy surrounding it has been dubbed “Breast Fondling Gate“. I saw the video about a week ago but have been patiently waiting to see if a more suitable website (I dunno, like chinaSMACK?) was going to report on it. The above quote is excerpted from the explanation Roland later added for why he reported on this piece of news:

Question: Why is this piece of trashy news being translated? Is this the usual effort to pander to vulgar tastes in order to boost website traffic? Well, I could easily boost traffic by several orders of magnitude if I post the original video here, but I won’t. My point here is that if you don’t understand this now widely known story and other similar stories (note: right after Breast Fondling Gate, there has also been Pull Pants Down Gate and the 613 Handa Archbishop Building photos already), then you don’t understand why Foreign Ministry spokesperson Qin Gang is able to ask back “Do you have any children yourself?” in reply to a question on Green Dam during the press conference. It is this and other similar stories that disturb many people in China. Do not scorn them for their conservativeness or ignorance. If you believe in democracy, then those people happen to constitute the majority. The Green Dam narrative is not completely one-sided, and this is also the reason why Green Dam will make a comeback in some form in the future. You are going to have to explain what, if anything, you plan to do about Breast Fondling Gate (using it as an illustrative example only), both in terms of causes and effects. What (if anything) is wrong with the kids? What enables this to happen? How can you change the motive and the action? Should that video be censored? Is it part of the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech and expression?

I’m personally curious as to whether Roland added this after people gave him a hard time for it, or if he just got self-conscious. Roland, you dirty old man, you!

Football or Hegemony: Choose One

From the monolithic blog that is known as The Huffington Post comes the following hilarious hilarious post in reaction to the FIFA Confederation Cup Finals which saw the unlikely soccer-playing Americans square off against football-playing Brazil and nearly win the series up 2-0 before those Brazillians rally back 3-2 to prevent hell from freezing over. For the convenience and edification of our readers in China for which The Huffington Post is blocked by the GFW, we’ve reprinted the complete text of the post below:

So the United States lost to Brazil in the final of the FIFA Confederations cup, in that thrilling but painful tale of two halves, with the U.S. up 2-0 only to see Brazil roar back (or rather dance and prance and glide with balletic ferocity) and win 3-2. All I can say is, thank god.

For the past sixty years, the powerhouses of international soccer (a.k.a. football) either have been empires past their prime and on the decline or countries that dream fruitlessly of empire – England, France, Italy, Germany, Argentina, Brazil, and Spain. To bestride the world as a soccer power is to not bestride it as an economic or military power. In its period of global hegemony, the United States was manifestly not a global powerhouse in soccer. It was mighty in everything but the sport that is played by more people in every corner of the world than any other. And so if the United States had magically defied the odds and the gods and beaten Brazil, it would have been the final sign that American is indeed in decline.

Of course, the United States may already be in irreversible relative decline, its near miss against Brazil notwithstanding. But for a moment at least, order was maintained. The other rising global power, namely China, shares with the United States an historical ineptitude for the game.

Argentina – with its rich tradition of World Cup prowess, its intellectual sophistication and its astonishing natural resources – was once thought of a hemispheric challenger to the United States, before Juan Peron and Evita cemented the country’s fate as a montage for an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Its victories in soccer are in almost inverse proportion to its political and economic stability.

Yet, there is the case of Brazil, which has been defying the odds and has started to demonstrate real leadership and success in today’s globalized economy. It has a confident and thriving middle class, energy independence and cutting edge use of biofuels, as well as decreasing corruption. That may explain why the national team has struggled of late, as Brazil attempts the rare feat of having both an ascendant national economy and a dominant football team.

For now, the world order is not yet dramatically upended, but as the game demonstrated and as the last year has proven, that order is in flux and the old hierarchies are unlikely to remain in place for long.

So is this good news or bad news for Americans? Perhaps it is just a strong warning for the MLS to sacrifice their aspirations for the good of the nation? Read the original at The Huffington Post »

Transformers 2 as American Propaganda and Arms Advertising

Another one to categorize under “shits and giggles” is this China Youth Daily article, as translated by the ever-heroic Roland Soong of EastSouthWestNorth, which outlines three arguments for how Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was a big showcase advertisement for the sale of American arms, propaganda for all countries to cooperate with the United States, and an idealization of American soldiers. An excerpt:

Watching Transformers 2 was undoubtedly an audio-visual feast. Just like the first movie, this was not just an entertainment film for the eyes and ears, because it also reflects the ideology and attitudes of America. Through this film, the intention of the American military to promote its global strategy and armament was expressed to its fullest.

First, the advanced weaponry of the American military was fully presented in Transformers 2.

The American Defense Department provided the White Sands missile testing ground to the film crew for the final battle scene. In terms of weaponry, it provided two A-10 jet fighters, six F-16 jet fighters, ten armored Hummer vehicles, two M1A2 tanks and the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis.

As everybody knows, these are the “traditional products” that America pushes in the international armaments market. The movie showed the mobility and excellent qualities of these products. They are going to be tempting for arms purchasers as well as nations in conflict zones. In reality, these are not the most advanced weaponry. For example, take the F-16 jet fighters that American likes to sell to conflict zones and third world countries. Although it has a mature technology, it is not the most advanced American jet fighter. The most advanced American jet fighter is the F-22, but it is not being exported. Technologically speaking, the F-22 is a complete generation ahead of the F-16.

In conclusion: You can watch my advanced weaponry in this movie! Come and buy some now! But I won’t sell you my best stuff! So even if you spend a lot of money, you won’t be able to beat me!

Is that whining I hear? Yes, definitely whining.

But then again, this is an article written for the home (Chinese) audience and insofar as it’ll negate or counter the possible propagandic influence such a movie might have, it’ll work. While many of us, when prompted, can easily see the commercial and patriotic tie-ins such a film certainly incorporates, there are many Chinese (and us) who might need a government mouthpiece to spell it out for them. This article does just that and, regardless of how juvenile some of the complaints or criticisms may be, one really needs to sit back and appreciate how fearsome American pop culture is influence is. After all, can we really argue that other nations can’t find American ideology and attitudes to run counter to their own national interests?

Read the Chinese version as posted at KDNet » or read the English translation at EastSouthWestNorth »

July 7th UPDATE: Imagethief’s Will Moss just published a great response to the same article, with a somewhat pornographic title – Hard robots, soft power »

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!

Electronic Police States: America and UK Lumped With China and North Korea

China and North Korea are first and second respectively (as expected) in a recent report about “electronic police states”, while the and United Kingdom and United States come in fifth and sixth. All four are colored oxygenated red as the “most advanced electronic police states.” Er, so what’s an “electronic police state”, you ask?

The two crucial facts about the information gathered under an electronic police state are these:

1. It is criminal evidence, ready for use in a trial.

2. It is gathered universally and silently, and only later organized for use in prosecutions.

In an Electronic Police State, every surveillance camera recording, every email you send, every Internet site you surf, every post you make, every check you write, every credit card swipe, every cell phone ping… are all criminal evidence, and they are held in searchable databases, for a long, long time. Whoever holds this evidence can make you look very, very bad whenever they care enough to do so. You can be prosecuted whenever they feel like it – the evidence is already in their database.

If you’re curious (or just mortified that your home country could be the same color as China), here’s the original PDF report.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. Helps you realize the possibility that your home country may not be that much better than China.
2. Helps you get angry at the thought that your home country could be compared to China.
3. Better understand the digitally recorded world we all live in and how it could turn on us.

Chinese Cyber Warfare & American Fear-Mongering…and Death Nerds

The ever-hilarious Will Moss (aka Imagethief) dissects a recent Washington Times article about China’s cyber warfare threats to the United States of America, incisively reducing each its highlights to a smoldering pile of sensationalist fear-mongering stupidity.

I should begin by saying, of course the Chinese government is conducting cyber-espionage against the US. They’d be stupid not to. And of course they are concerned with securing their own critical systems against the United States’ equally inevitable cyber-espionage. Again, they’d be stupid not to. And certainly the US government needs to take information security seriously. And so do businesses. And so does your grandmother. Especially if she’s using Windows. All granted.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. Stops you from being stupid and becoming a victim of sensationalist fear-mongering.
2. Stops you from then voting for neo-cons and eroding cherished civil liberties.
3. Death nerds. Always. Matter.

How Failure To Bargain In China Leads To The Apocalypse

After summarizing the three main categories of bargainers that foreigners in China fall into (The Innocent, The Hardliners, The Generous), Glen at the Lost Laowai goes on to explain why failure to bargain well in China is “ethically wrong” and serves neither the interests of foreigners nor the Chinese themselves.

Here we have some clearly intelligent and capable individuals, who could be performing meaningful jobs that benefit their community and help along its development, but instead they are telling me where to buy the best souvenirs because it is more profitable. Surely that can’t be right.

In overpaying, and in a big way, we are creating a market for cheap fixes to problems facing the developed word, as opposed to having them find long term solutions.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. Save yourself potentially vast sums of money when shopping.
2. Prevent China’s economy from becoming too dependent on foreign ignorance and generosity.

Chinese Netizens Lament How Little Their Lives Are Worth

Source: Brappy.com

Fauna from the ever-pleasant chinaSMACK translates a Chinese netizen’s rant about how China views the value of an individual life.  The rant further compares China to other more developed countries when considering the relatively high sums of wrongful death compensation paid by Taiwanese and Korean companies versus the shockingly low sums paid by Shanxi coal mine overlords and China’s state railway department. The netizen asks: Why is there a maximum compensation amount instead of a minimum? And why are the lives of animals worth more than the lives of Chinese people?

The value of a life is supreme/paramount, intrinsically unable to be measured by money, which is also to say, the value of life should not be a highest limit problem. Life is not merchandise, it should not be haggled over, and even less have a highest limit. Instead, there should be the opposite regulation, which is to have only a lowest limit, and even without one, there should not be an upper limit standard. The 400,000 upper limit, actually is us standardizing the value of our own citizens’ lives, treating Chinese people like merchandise, whose lives have a price tag, and what more is a low price! If this is not us insulting (prostituting) ourselves, then what is it?

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. Gain a better understanding of why life may be cheap in China.
2. Gain a better understanding of Chinese society’s frustrations with, and criticisms of, itself.

That Hangzhou Street Racing Incident

GVO, ESWN, and chinaSMACK all translate various Chinese articles and netizen comments concerning the latest internet outrage over a street-racing rich kid hitting a pedestrian in Hangzhou. China’s infamous human flesh search engines uncover a surprising amount of personal information on both the victim and the racer as the public pressures the police and government to ensure that money does not get in the way of the law this time as it so often does. ESWN, in particular, translates a netizen’s defense of Hu Bin, the driver, arguing that the government should go easy on him because rich people contribute more to the nation.

3. In terms of contribution to the Gross Domestic Product of China as well as Hangzhou, the family of Hu Bin is immeasurably more important than the Tan Family.  Wu Bin is the builder, sponsor and economic supporter that Hangzhou needs.  Meanwhile Tan has just joined the workforce and his contribution is small — in fact, he is using more resources from than he is contributing to Hangzhou.  When we deal with the problem, this should be our first consideration.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. Feeds your fear of crossing Chinese streets filled with Chinese drivers.
2. Reminds you to stick to the West Lake area in Hangzhou. Elsewhere is certain death.
3. Fear the awesome power of the (cue dramatic music) “human flesh search engines!”
4. See Chinese society’s resentment towards the rich who can buy their way out of trouble.

Bonus! A Useful List of Chinese Bridge Bloggers

If you liked our list of eclectic China blogs or China blogs by women, you might love the post on Chinese bridge bloggers who are writing about a variety of topics in English that Adam over at 56minus1 just published.

Bridge blogs are being written for an audience unable to read Chinese, one that’s possibly unfamiliar with Chinese culture, both online and off, with the goal of mutual understanding and information exchange between countries and cultures.

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. Because you really don’t want all your info and understanding of China to come from foreigners and expats.

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!