Xinhua reported official policies announced by the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) where journalists cannot be blacklisted or blocked from reporting. China has over 7,000 papers and magazines in circulation, and this figure is hardly a surprise given the explosive growth in the last three decades in the country. GAPP, having oversight over news media, has absolutely made the right call. In 2008, China passed a very important transparency law (“Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information” (中华人民共和国政府信息公开条例)) requiring government departments to disclose certain information. (See my prior post, “China’s determined and long march towards rule of law.”) This assertion made by the GAPP will help foster a culture of timely government disclosure – as a way to combat rumors and disinformation as well in dealing with corruption. Note that the report also says that reporters who fabricate stories or blackmail will be punished. Read more…
Vice-Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai meets United States Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell in Honolulu on Asia-Pacific
Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai met with United States Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell in Honolulu few days ago in what is the first official U.S.-China dialog on the Asia Pacific. This meeting came about as a result of the last Strategic & Economics Dialog where both countries decided it was critical they find ways to advance peace for the region.
As raventhorn2000 has pointed out here, the U.S. media as usual are advancing a very bleak and confrontational narrative over recent developments in the South China Sea. In the spirit of the S&ED, that is very misguided. I think it is important we keep things in proper perspective and to hear the two government’s official positions directly; Chinese government through Xinhua here and U.S. Department of State through its blog, DipNote, here. In fact, it is worthwhile to think from the perspective of other players in East Asia as well. Read more…
Chris Wallace of Fox News hosted Jon Stewart in a pretty interesting exchange about the state of media in the U.S.. Stewart is a long time critic of Fox News; not as much for the sensationalism, misinformation, and leanings towards conflict which he finds in America’s mass media, but the ‘partisanship’ he thinks Fox News partakes in. It’s a 24 minute video and I highly recommend viewing in its entirety. In my view, the ENTIRE American media is in ‘partisanship’ against the world. The media is worthwhile examining, and I invite you to share your thoughts.
Lately, I have been wondering if it is possible for someone in the West to completely boycott the mainstream media. Obviously, the goal is to be more informed afterwards. For those of you don’t think you are in the ‘West,’ feel free to chime in too. Any of you out there feel you are informed and without the mainstream media? This post is meant to solicit discussion, and I hope we can come up with a reasonable answer. Perhaps complete boycott is not possible, but still, even a partial one would be improvement in my opinion. Read more…
If you check the definition of 阴阳 in Wikipedia, you will see the following :
“In Chinese philosophy, the concept of yin yang (simplified Chinese: 阴阳; traditional Chinese: 陰陽; pinyin: yīnyáng) is normally referred to in the West as “yin and yang” and is used to describe how polar or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn.”
And “Yin yang are complementary opposites that interact within a greater whole, as part of a dynamic system.”
Is this the way how Chinese understand 阴阳 ? I beg to differ. Read more…
Recently, South China Sea territorial disputes seem to heat up in the Media. China is once again, accused of notching up aggression because of its increase might.
A good time to examine the truths in the disputes, and the media coverage of the issue.
I highly recommend heading over to the Shanghai Scrap blog where American writer Adam Minter interviews his friend, Mara Hvistendahl, who has just published the book, “Unnatural Selection: Missing Girls, Abortion, and the Perversion of Choice.” To give you an idea of the conversation, I have excerpted a question below. You might want the book too.
Scrap: Focusing on China – it’s almost accepted gospel, for those not familiar with the issue, that infanticide, the one-child policy, and abandonment account for the country’s skewed sex ratio, and that abortion is only part of the mix. Yet you not only object to that formulation, you seem to imply that it’s both condescending and a gross distortion that obscures the real issues. Could you give a sense of how important each of those facts is, in fact, to China’s gender issues, and why they are only a small part of the overall picture?
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made another round of public statements about China I thought worthwhile taking a look. As the Chinese become more affluent, I think they will care less and less. But, for now, they do. Reuters reported on Clinton’s remarks in her recent trip to Africa, and I would like to share my thoughts on those.
LUSAKA, June 11 — Africa must beware of “new colonialism” as China expands ties there and focus instead on partners able to help build economic capacity on the continent, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today.
Look, the Africans can decide for themselves what is best for them. The best thing that has happened to Africa in recent years is the fact that there is a economically significant nation who is offering them an alternative, and frankly, one that is giving them a much better deal. Read more…
I continue to like how Henry Kissinger discusses the China-U.S. relationship; not in the sense that he is capable of articulating the Chinese leaders point of views but much more in a way that seeks for mutual benefits for the two countries. For example, in his discussion on MSNBC couple of weeks ago (video below), he thought a sudden U.S. withdraw from Afghanistan would leave a vacuum for India and Pakistan to conduct their proxy wars with each other, and with a resurgent Al Qaeda presence would also be a destabilizing force for China’s western regions. China and U.S. are the two single largest countries, and they will tend to “inject” themselves at each other around the world purely given their sizes. As in the case with Afghanistan (and others like climate change), U.S. and China need to seek alignment.
In early May, China announced a smoking ban in public places and I expressed some pessimism in how fast this will truly take effect. Later, I found a reason to be optimistic. When I saw this news of Robin Li and Bill Gates agreeing to work together between the Baidu Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for “Say No to Involuntary Smoking” in China, I became ecstatic.
This was just an announcement, so I need to wait and see, and will be looking forward to the foundations work reports in the coming years.
Following is a story of triumph about 高逸峰 (Gao Yifeng) on the wildly popular “中国达人秀” (“China’s Got Talent”) show. According to the Baike page, Gao once owned a very large business. Through mismanagement, his company went bankrupt. He re-emerged into a much more modest endeavor. Below is my translation of his conversation with the judge before he performs, “从头再来.” This song is one of my favorite, and with Gao bearing his battle scar while performing it, I can see how he was able to move his audience to tears.
Judge: What are you performing?
Gao Yifeng: Sing a song
Judge: Where are you from?
Gao Yifeng: Anhui
Judge: How old are you?
Gao Yifeng: 49
Judge: Your hair is very special. It looks great. Did you color it or is it naturally that way? Read more…
Full transcript here. Also check out Allen‘s book review. Audio recording accessible through here. Kissinger’s warnings to us all must be repeated, in his answer to Conan’s following question: Read more…
Students learning to become hairdressers at Lanxiang Vocational School in Jinan
Google has been up to making empty allegations against China since it decided to withdraw last year. In its latest salvo, it accused the Chinese government of a phishing attack on Gmail accounts. As predicted, such allegations are spreading like wild fire in the Western media. In fact, the innuendos are narrated into facts, and it is always amazing to see how this propaganda machinery works.
It claimed the phishing attacks “appears to originate from Jinan, China.” The Lanxiang Vocations School which was at the center of Google’s last year claim of Gmail attacks is also in Jinan. Apparently, the hairdressing students at Lanxiang no longer find this spotlight funny.
Did Google offer any more facts than last time? No. But, seriously, let’s look at some real ones. In this respected business and venture capital journal, Venture Beat, Matt Marshall tells us: Read more…
It has been 22 years since the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen incident. While the Western media has over the years toned down this ‘massacre’ myth, they are still using vague language to keep the ‘massacre’ narrative alive. For example, even NPR’s ‘anniversary’ piece yesterday, echoing an Associated Press article, described it as “the crushing of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement.”
With declassified U.S. government documents and other Westerner accounts, Gregory Clark in this well researched 2008 article published in the Japan Times, “Birth of a massacre myth,” explained how the New York Times and other Western media were still pushing that narrative despite all evidence concluding otherwise. Recent Wikileaked U.S. embassy cables also showed the U.S. government knew there was no bloodshed in Tiananmen Square [editor: link updated on 3/19/2012 from vancouversun – which became unreachable – to telegraph link]. Apparently, condemning China is okay while lying along with the media. Read more…
One key point, in my opinion, of our work here is to try to disentangle facts from one’s version of the truth. What is especially difficult is trying to disentangle one’s plausible version of the truth – a truth arising from one’s ideological perspective – from facts. At least that’s the soft version. The hard version is trying to reveal the perpetration of plausible truth in furtherance of political ends that perpetuate many unjust aspects of the current world order – that promote war rather than peace. We call such perpetration “propaganda” – even though we fully understand that in the West, people prefer to relegate “propaganda” to government sponsored perpetration, calling the rest “spins.” We personally don’t see the need for such discrimination. Political “spins” – especially carried out consistently and pervasively on a population that is neither educated nor vigilant about world affairs but that gladly “votes” (enables political actions to be taken) based on ignorance – is probably the supreme form of “propaganda.” (Allen)
Recent Comments