Stanford University Professor Takes The Onion Seriously

About two weeks ago, pretty much all the blogs about China reported on satire news website The Onion doing a China Special, redesigning their website to look as if they’ve been sold to a Chinese company, and publishing a ton of China-specific articles ranging from funny to lame. The Onion has, of course, since moved on and back to their original design now that the special is over (but archived for posterity here).

One of the more interesting reactions to The Onion’s China special is the following essay by a Stanford professor named Haiyan Lee. Apparently, it was originally posted on The China Beat but was also reprinted on Shanghaiist since the former is currently blocked in China by the Great Firewall. Here’s an excerpt:

No savvy Onion reader should be fooled by this non-too-subtle effort at mocking the sorry state of the publishing industry and the corporate takeover of the media in contemporary America. No one, really, should even be surprised that a fictive Chinese corporation is the villain of this imaginary apocalypse. After all, wasn’t GM’s Hummer just sold to an obscure Chinese company called Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company Ltd.? Bizarre as it may have sounded, that piece of news shouldn’t have surprised too many either. For better or for worse, China has been on Americans’ mind for quite some time—at least those Americans who have been paying attention to the intricate linkage between the Chinese compulsion to save and the subprime mortgage crisis that has brought the American economy to its knees, to the chattering class ratcheting up the specter of “China rising,” to the media coverage of the Beijing Olympics and the ethnic riots, to news stories about poisonous toothpaste, carcinogenic toys, and tainted milk powder.

In the new millennium, China’s has mostly shed its Cold War cartoonish image as an evil Communist regime that hates freedom and democracy but cannot stop its citizens from loving those beautiful ideals, at least not in their basements (they must have basements where they can write subversive poetry, build little replicas of the Statue of Liberty, and dream of rising up against the gerontocrats ensconced behind the Gate of Heavenly Peace). Today, the Chinese are viewed with suspicion not as ideological fanatics (that role has been taken over by Islamic fundamentalists) but as relentless profit-seekers bound by neither law nor conscience. Thus a Chinese company coming out of nowhere to take a stab at acquiring a piece of what was once the pinnacle of American industrial achievements was truly a remarkable event whose significance could not be adequately marked by mainstream media trying to steer clear of fear-mongering. Thus it has fallen on a cabal of professional satirists to spell out its full implications.

Emphases mine. Lee’s essay is very long with a sophistication befitting a Stanford professor of Chinese literature and civilization (prepare yourself for a few uncommon words like “mordant” and “arriviste“). It doesn’t just offer biting criticism of China and the United States but also veers somewhat philosophically into the very nature of politics and journalism as humor, before leaving you with both the conclusion that China brought others’ derision upon itself and the uncomfortable feeling that our derision springs from our own subconscious insecurities. Oof, heady stuff, eh? As such, I highly recommend reading the entire essay for yourself at either The China Beat or Shanghaiist »

A Cautionary Tale About Chinese Employees Examined

Dan of China Law Blog takes “A cautionary tale from China” by the Financial Times to task. The original article retells a sordid story of a German advertising company getting screwed by its Chinese employees, which Dan corrects to it being screwed by its own idiotic German boss for mismanaging (hell, failing to manage) the business:

So what did the German company in the FT.com article do wrong? It was not wrong for it to go into China and it was not wrong for it to put a local Chinese in charge. Its mistake appears to have been putting way too much trust in a small core of employees, shutting out the lines of communication to the other employees, and failing to engage in even basic monitoring of the business. Setting up and running a business in China (or anywhere overseas for that matter) completely remotely is a classic path to problems.

It was also wrong for the German owner to allow his libido to get involved in his business. We have a client in a very much male dominated industry who sends only his female employees to China because, as he puts it, he “doesn’t trust his male employees not to go on three day benders with females and do really stupid things.”

Anyway, the moral of the FT.com story is really rather basic. If you mismanage your business in China (or anywhere else) you will probably end up with some pretty newsworthy problems.

China business-heads, pay attention!

How To Legally Establish Your Business In China

A lot, a LOT, of entrepreneurs and businesses are looking to establish a company in China. Most of these people can’t read Chinese and haven’t a clue on how to navigate China’s ever-daunting laws, regulations, and bureaucracy. If there is anything lawyers are supposed to do, it’s for them to figure all of this out for you and hold your hand through it (at least in their area of expertise or specialization). This is one reason why China Law Blog is such a gem of a resource for anyone interested in doing business in (or with) China.

If you’ve done any cursory research into starting a company in China, you’ve probably already run across terms like joint-ventures (JVs), representative officers (ROs), or wholly foreign-owned foreign enterprises (WFOEs). If you haven’t, Dan of China Law Blog has compiled an excellent semi-table-of-contents guide to English information on these terms and other things to consider when establishing or expanding a business in China. An excerpt:

A WFOE will be its own free standing Chinese company, able to do just about everything a domestic Chinese company can do. We can set this company up to be 100% owned by your existing company, or we can form a new US (or Hong Kong company) to own it. Here are some articles we have written regarding the forming of a WFOE:

• The basics of forming a WFOE in China.
• An article explaining one of many reasons why it is critical to form a China WFOE correctly.
• Another article on China WFOE basics.
• A two part series laying out what it takes to form a WFOE in China and explaining China’s minimum capital requirements.

In general, to add a bit of my own experience into the mix, forming a company in China is not nearly as easy as it is in Hong Kong, but then a Hong Kong company is NOT a substitute for a proper Chinese company. As always, seek your legal advice from those legally qualified to give it. Head on over to China Law Blog to read the entire post »

Reflections Of The Rising Middle Class

In China, famous Chinese blogger Wang Jianshuo is definitely not poor. Why? He has a car. However, Wang Jianshuo is not rich either. Why? Just look at his car (yes, I’m just teasing him, he’s a down to earth kind of guy). Of course, as he himself states “rich is a relative term”, he is certainly richer than many but likewise also poorer than many (read: evil government officials).  I happen to think of Wang Jianshuo as part of the rising middle (upper-middle?) class in China, wherever that may be in China’s distorted distribution of wealth “curve”. His latest post, “I am a Rich Person?” is deeply introspective and muses about how he grapples with what kind of expectations he should have of other people in Chinese society:

I started to yield at drivers who don’t yield to people on pedestrian when they do right turn. I started to educate service people behind the window of banks to show respects to their clients. I even started to educate people in the government that they should pay respect to citizens, and don’t yell to them, because they are not their slaves; I was even naive enough to mention to them that it is the tax payers money that supported their job (I was surely laughed at loudly). Anyway, there are so many situations that I feel I am right, and people are doing something wrong.

Until one day, Wendy said this to me: “Jian Shuo, how can you be so mean to them?”

In the end, Wang Jianshuo seems to arrive at a newly rebalanced but relativist perspective on human interaction, which might be a bit jarring for those of us who cling to fairly set and seemingly objective expectations for how anyone should behave or relate to others. Regardless, there’s a ton to think about that is very personally relevant to all of us in Wang Jianshuo’s post, so I strongly recommend venturing over to read it »

Post from: CN Reviews

Stanford Professors, Establishing A Legal Company & Rich People

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

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

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

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

Richard Brubaker: Rudd Proves Theory. China Cannot Win.

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

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

Yet nothing could be further from the truth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charlie McElwee: Litter Bugs

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

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

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

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

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

Malcome Moore: Journalists in China get death threats

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

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

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

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

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

Edna Zhou: Legalized prostitution in Taiwan stirring debate

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did I miss anything?

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

Post from: CN Reviews

Shanghai Blogger Summit: Not To Be Outdone By Beijing Bloggers

Credit: MARK RALSTON (AFP/Getty Images)

How Dare We Feel Sorry For Ourselves…

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

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

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

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

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

Why This Should Matter To You:

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

The Seven Habits Of Highly Ineffective Expats

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

Habit #1
Comparisons

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

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

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

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

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

Why This Should Matter To You:

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

V Is For Vendetta

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

To the Internet censors of China,

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

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

Why This Should Matter To You:

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

Michael Jackson Has Left The Building

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why This Should Matter To You:

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

Do Cool Stuff With Cool Chinese People

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

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

Why This Should Matter To You:

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

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

Post from: CN Reviews

Beggars, Expat Habits, Netizen Revolution, Jackson, & Parkour

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!

Post from: CN Reviews

The Good, Bad, & Ugly Of Trains, Youth, Politics, Dissidents & CCTV

The Green Dam Debacle As Decentralizing Censorship

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

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

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

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

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

Why This Should Matter To You:

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

Chinese Hui Muslim Minority 1, Chengguan 0

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

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

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

Why This Should Matter To You:

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

Political Discussion In China, Where Foreigners Never Tread

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

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

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

Why This Should Matter To You:

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

Blast From the Past: Westernization is Barbarization, Not Modernization

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

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

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

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

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

Why This Should Matter To You:

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

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

Post from: CN Reviews

Green Dam, Anti-Hui Prejudice, Chinese Politics, & Barbarism!

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

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

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

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

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

Why This Should Matter To You:

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

James Fallows on Speculation vs. Analysis

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

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

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

Why This Should Matter To You:

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

China Is The Silicon Valley On Steroids

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

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

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

Why This Should Matter To You:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why This Should Matter To You:

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

Old People Need Lovin’ Too…

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

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

Why This Should Matter To You:

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

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

Post from: CN Reviews

Young/Old, Analysis/Speculation, Serial/Parallel, China/Saudi/Egypt

Reports flooding in from around the internet have confirmed that Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail (see update below), Live, and Bing (Microsoft’s new search engine) have joined YouTube, Blogspot, and WordPress.com (amongst countless others) in being blocked from internet users in China. Wikipedia remains unblocked …though I might have just jinxed it by saying so.

If you’re looking for ways around the blocks, Ryan at Lost Laowai, has two recommendations:

If you don’t have a good VPN, be sure to check out Hotspot Shield (free, but slow), or personalVPN/Witopia (minimal yearly fee, but fast). A VPN creates a secure tunnel that will allow you to view the Internet as if you were in the country the VPN is hosted in (US, UK, etc.). I have used services such as Tor in the past, but couldn’t stand the slow speed. I bit the bullet and signed up with WiTopia about a year ago and couldn’t be happier. I have no experience with Hotspot Shield, but have heard it is decent in a pinch.

Chinese blog Very Yellow, Very Violent also threw up a temporary solution for accessing Twitter:

临时访问Twitter的解决方案，将:

168.143.162.100 twitter.com www.twitter.com

这段加到 hosts 文件，Windows 在 C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc 目录下，Linux/Mac 在 /etc/hosts

It suggests adding that line to your hosts file, at the above locations in Windows and Linux/Mac. Unfortunately, having tried it, I don’t think it works. Anyone else try it?

If you’re looking for more options, however, be sure NOT to listen to the sage guidance offered by Mashable:

As far as solutions for evading the block go, you can find some advice here and here.

Right, like anyone currently blocked is able to use Twitter Search to search for tweets about VPNs and Hot Spot Shield. Smart. Good job, Mashable.

As we reported about two weeks ago, however, you can check out some of the options offered by Shanghaiist:

1. Find a good proxy page. Coobai and G-Proxy are good for most sites, but if you’re itching to hit up YouTube, give Coolkidsonly or YouTube Proxy a try. Just plug in the address and continue surfing.
2. GLadder. ONLY FOR FIREFOX USERS. Install it in your browser and click the little ladder button to turn it on. Works off a customizable site list, so you won’t be redirected through a proxy when you try to reach non-banned sites.
3. Anchorfree. It has some pop-ups, adds an ad banner to every page and it’ll sometimes redirect you without warning, but for the most part, it’s easy and painfree. Download, install and you’re up and running.
4. TOR (The Onion Router). At times a little clumsy and slow, but completely ad-free. Again, all you have to do is download and install.
5. GAppProxy. Google comes to the rescue once again. This isn’t the most straightforward fix, but it’s reliable and hassle-free once you figure it out. Download the GAppProxy here, then follow these instructions to build yourself a proxy server on the Google App Engine.

Many people are wondering if MSN Messenger is next to be blocked yet given how many Chinese people (especially in the offices) use it, blocking it sounds unfathomable. Then again, Hotmail is blocked, so maybe all bets are off.

Whatever the case, even many Chinese are scratching their heads in consternation wondering just how “immature” and “shameless” the Chinese central government responsible for these blocks can be. Those Chinese who are aware of the big anniversary coming up in the next two days (the carnage began on the night of the 3rd) point out that the vast majority of China’s youth are ignorant of the event as it is, so why bother blocking so many websites?

Indeed, one would imagine that doing so would only clue the ignorant masses that something was amiss, further spurring their curiosity to find out just what’s got the government’s giant knickers in a bunch. If nothing else, these blocks might annoy the foreigner population that regularly use these websites enough to inspire them to campaign even more fervently to their surrounding Chinese the information that has been veiled from their eyes and minds. Wouldn’t all this potentially offset whatever gains the government could receive from such blocks?

Eh, maybe not. At best, shrug.

Here’s to crossing our fingers and hoping things get better a couple days from now.

June 3rd UPDATE: Very Yellow, Very Violent has a new post with some easy options to get on Twitter:

1. 使用前一个帖子的改hosts方案
2. 使用本站自架的twitter平台 http://hen.huang.hen.bao.li/twitter/
3. 使用 http://hellotxt.com/ 等第三方 twitter 平台
4. 在自己的海外服务器上安装dabr (就是本站用的系统)，Linux主机上只需

svn checkout http://dabr.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ twitter
mv twitter/config.sample.php twitter/config.php

蚂蚁雄兵干死GFW!

I’ve tested #2 and the website for #3 works.

June 3rd, 12:40pm UPDATE: Jason Zhan from IN2marcom updates us in the comments below that Microsoft’s popular free e-mail service Hotmail is once again available in Shanghai (and perhaps the rest of China?). If I had to guess, I’d say enough Chinese people relying on Hotmail for business purposes bitched for the government to unblock it.

June 3rd 11:30pm UPDATE: Just had great Indian food with the ever-lovable Kaiser Kuo who is here visiting Shanghai and realized how incredibly wrong I was about Hotmail in China. While I knew that many more Chinese netizens use other services such as QQ, Sina, 163/Netease, etc., I had assumed that a decent amount of Chinese netizens use Hotmail, given that it was the quintessential first-mover success story of free e-mail. Kaiser enlightened me to how mistaken I was, reminding me that while Hotmail was a first-mover, it had entered China when the internet user population was still quite small. More importantly, while many Chinese do indeed have Hotmail accounts, they were largely used only to register for MSN Messenger, and not really as their primary e-mail account. Kaiser didn’t even have to finish that sentence for “DUH” to materialize over my head. Ugh, what a brainfart on my part.

June 8th 3:30pm UPDATE: Twitter and Flickr seem to be unblocked and accessible again.

Post from: CN Reviews

China’s Great Firewall Blocks Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail, Live, Bing

The Day The Communists Took Over Shanghai

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

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

Why This Should Matter To You:

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

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

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

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

Why This Should Matter To You:

1. You’re a brash, arrogant American who resents being l