Welcome Back...to Reality

I've now been back in Beijing for almost a month. True to form, the day I landed in Beijing, the air looked something like this. (ok, not that bad). Thankfully it rained the next day, and I have to say, the air, even for the Paralympics has been pretty good, with a few beautiful "great" days thrown in. But that all changed on Saturday. The 奥运期 (Olympic period) is now officially over. Factories are up and running, all cars are on the road, I have to work til 6, and you can buy knives at Carrefour (seriously, they weren't selling knives during the Olympics...). Olympic Beijing was wonderful while it lasted (even if it played a part in me spending the Olympics at home), but now its back to the real Beijing.

A short personal update: since being back, I've started teaching, but this time at a new school in a much nicer location. I have also returned to work and seen a Paralympic event (wheelchair tennis - very fun to watch). And I have plans to visit the seaside city of Qingdao during the October 1 - National Day - vacation. (Yes, the same Qingdao - or Tsingdao - where they make the beer).

I'm now also going to post the backlog of articles I've written since July. Comments are very much welcome.

It Takes a School, Not Missiles

Op-ed from probably my favorite NYTimes columnist. Here.

By Nicholas Kristof

Since 9/11, Westerners have tried two approaches to fight terrorism in Pakistan, President Bush’s and Greg Mortenson’s.

Mr. Bush has focused on military force and provided more than $10 billion — an extraordinary sum in the foreign-aid world — to the highly unpopular government of President Pervez Musharraf. This approach has failed: the backlash has radicalized Pakistan’s tribal areas so that they now nurture terrorists in ways that they never did before 9/11.

Mr. Mortenson, a frumpy, genial man from Montana, takes a diametrically opposite approach, and he has spent less than one-ten-thousandth as much as the Bush administration. He builds schools in isolated parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, working closely with Muslim clerics and even praying with them at times.

The only thing that Mr. Mortenson blows up are boulders that fall onto remote roads and block access to his schools.

Mr. Mortenson has become a legend in the region, his picture sometimes dangling like a talisman from rearview mirrors, and his work has struck a chord in America as well. His superb book about his schools, “Three Cups of Tea,” came out in 2006 and initially wasn’t reviewed by most major newspapers. Yet propelled by word of mouth, the book became a publishing sensation: it has spent the last 74 weeks on the paperback best-seller list, regularly in the No. 1 spot.

Now Mr. Mortenson is fending off several dozen film offers. “My concern is that a movie might endanger the well-being of our students,” he explains.

Mr. Mortenson found his calling in 1993 after he failed in an attempt to climb K2, a Himalayan peak, and stumbled weakly into a poor Muslim village. The peasants nursed him back to health, and he promised to repay them by building the village a school.

Scrounging the money was a nightmare — his 580 fund-raising letters to prominent people generated one check, from Tom Brokaw — and Mr. Mortenson ended up selling his beloved climbing equipment and car. But when the school was built, he kept going. Now his aid group, the Central Asia Institute, has 74 schools in operation. His focus is educating girls.

To get a school, villagers must provide the land and the labor to assure a local “buy-in,” and so far the Taliban have not bothered his schools. One anti-American mob rampaged through Baharak, Afghanistan, attacking aid groups — but stopped at the school that local people had just built with Mr. Mortenson. “This is our school,” the mob leaders decided, and they left it intact.

Mr. Mortenson has had setbacks, including being kidnapped for eight days in Pakistan’s wild Waziristan region. It would be naïve to think that a few dozen schools will turn the tide in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

Still, he notes that the Taliban recruits the poor and illiterate, and he also argues that when women are educated they are more likely to restrain their sons. Five of his teachers are former Taliban, and he says it was their mothers who persuaded them to leave the Taliban; that is one reason he is passionate about educating girls.

So I have this fantasy: Suppose that the United States focused less on blowing things up in Pakistan’s tribal areas and more on working through local aid groups to build schools, simultaneously cutting tariffs on Pakistani and Afghan manufactured exports. There would be no immediate payback, but a better-educated and more economically vibrant Pakistan would probably be more resistant to extremism.

“Schools are a much more effective bang for the buck than missiles or chasing some Taliban around the country,” says Mr. Mortenson, who is an Army veteran.

Each Tomahawk missile that the United States fires in Afghanistan costs at least $500,000. That’s enough for local aid groups to build more than 20 schools, and in the long run those schools probably do more to destroy the Taliban.

The Pentagon, which has a much better appreciation for the limits of military power than the Bush administration as a whole, placed large orders for “Three Cups of Tea” and invited Mr. Mortenson to speak.

“I am convinced that the long-term solution to terrorism in general, and Afghanistan specifically, is education,” Lt. Col. Christopher Kolenda, who works on the Afghan front lines, said in an e-mail in which he raved about Mr. Mortenson’s work. “The conflict here will not be won with bombs but with books. ... The thirst for education here is palpable.”

Military force is essential in Afghanistan to combat the Taliban. But over time, in Pakistan and Afghanistan alike, the best tonic against militant fundamentalism will be education and economic opportunity.

So a lone Montanan staying at the cheapest guest houses has done more to advance U.S. interests in the region than the entire military and foreign policy apparatus of the Bush administration.

‘The Endless Pursuit of Unnecessary Things’

A blog post from a long time ago on the NYTimes' Dot Earth blog. Should at least give people cause for thought. Here.

By Andrew Revkin

Amid the flow of Super Tuesdays, Superbowl surprises, news about faltering energy projects and rising solar cities, I’ve been collecting threads that relate to a central theme of Dot Earth: the implications of humanity’s growing numbers and resource thirst.

Here are a few from the last few days:

- A radio commentary quoting one of the less-familiar dictums of Adam Smith, who is best known for championing economic growth, but in this case was warning about too much of a good thing.

- The hypnotically unnerving documentary “Manufactured Landscapes,” which glaringly displays the increasingly human-shaped face of Earth.

- A sociology paper proposing that the best way to lessen consumption for its own sake is to reduce how much people work. (Is there a win-win here, or am I missing something?)

- A paper in the journal Science on sustainability showing that, by one measure, afflictions related to affluence take away as many years of life as do ills associated with poverty.

These papers and observations all circle around the two questions at the heart of the sustainability puzzle that will largely determine the quality of human lives and the environment in which they are lived: How many? How much?

How many people will inhabit Earth in the next few generations?

How much stuff – energy, land, water, marine life – will they consume?

A few examples: The overlay of rising demand and lagging supply of oil or comparable liquid fuel will shape everything from economics to international conflict. The amount of coal extracted and burned (along with the oil) will influence climate for centuries to come. The extent of land used to grow fuel, food, or fiber will determine the costs of those necessities and also the fate of the world’s last untrammeled ecosystems.

Back to the related nuggets above.

I was listening to the public-radio program Marketplace and heard a guest commentary by Charles Handy, an expert on business management who founded the London Business School and is in residence at the Drucker School of Business of Claremont (Calif.) Graduate University.

He was musing on the ideas of two departed pillars of economics, Adam Smith and Peter Drucker, in relation to limits to growth.

An excerpt:

…I wonder how [Peter Drucker] would have reacted to some of the things that bother me. For instance, how would he respond to what I call “Adam Smith’s Great Conundrum?”

Adam Smith, the father of economics, 250 years ago, said: “An investment is by all right-minded people to be commended, because it brings comforts and necessities to the citizenry. But, if continued indefinitely, it will lead to the endless pursuit of unnecessary things.”

Now that I am living for a while in California, I am staggered by the amount of “unnecessary things” that I see in the malls that dot the suburbs. America is no different from anywhere else, of course — just more so.

The conundrum is this: All that stuff creates jobs — making it, promoting it, selling it. It’s literally the stuff of growth. What I’d love to ask Peter Drucker is: How do you grow an economy without the jobs and taxes that these unnecessary things produce?

Drucker saw business as the agent of progress. Its main responsibility, he said, was to come up with new ideas and take them to market. But not just any new ideas, please — only those that bring genuine benefits to the customers, and do not muck up the environment.

The market, unfortunately, does not differentiate between good and bad. If the people want junk, the market will provide. So we have to fall back on the conscience of our business leaders.

Then there was “Manufactured Landscapes,” a film examining how human demands for resources and products are transforming the physical world, and the environment experienced on a daily basis by humans caught up in the rush of urbanized, mechanized, work-centered life. It does so over the shoulder of the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, who has made chronicling the face of the Anthropocene epoch his life’s work of late.

I saw a snippet of it when writing a post on the “urban age” last week, but finally had a chance to watch the DVD. It is an unforgettable experience, something like a mash-up of “Apocalypse Now” and “Modern Times.”

It is a sobering view, particularly the scenes in sprawling Chinese factory cities churning out the (unnecessary?) things that prosperous people seem to need in ever-rising amounts. Watch the hands of a young woman as she speeds through the 20 or so manipulations necessary to make an electronic device whose purpose she only can guess at. She makes 400 a day. Then watch as the camera pans cavernous halls full of similar workers, then cuts outdoors to the cordons of thousands of workers heading to yellow dormitories.

How many factories? How much stuff?

Then came “Sustainable Consumption and Worktime Reduction,” a paper by Juliet Schor, a sociologist at Boston College, that I stumbled on while surfing a 2005 special issue of the journal Industrial Ecology on the global impacts of cities. The entire issue is enlightening.

She chronicles how industrialized economies have generally translated productivity gains in the workplace into making more stuff (and money to buy stuff) instead of making less work (reducing work hours).

A world heading toward 9 billion, however, following that path of ever more work and money to buy ever more stuff, cannot be sustained, Professor Schor concludes:

Achieving a sustainable and equitable global solution is clearly incompatible with a worldwide replication of U.S. lifestyles or even the somewhat less damaging ecological impacts of the lifestyles of other industrialized countries. In such a situation, inhabitants of the global North can and should opt for a new economic and social vision based on quality of life, rather than quantity of stuff, with reduced work time and ecological sustainability at its core. Such a vision has the potential to create broad-based pressure for an alternative to the current system of ecologically destructive, inequitable consumer-driven growth. Indeed, the future of the planet increasingly depends on it.

This paper echoed ideas I explored in 2005, when writing on Bhutan’s experiment with “gross national happiness” as a substitute for the more familiar gross national product.

Finally, there was “Science and Technology for Sustainable Well-Being,” a paper in Science by John P. Holdren, the Harvard expert on energy, environment, development and lots of other things.

The paper is a sprawling portrait of a world poised between a livable path toward 9 billion and one wracked by disruption and suffering, along with a menu for limiting losses as we head into crunch time these next few decades. But one chart really grabbed my attention. By Dr. Holdren’s analysis, when you measure human tolls in years of life lost (e.g., a child cut down by disease loses decades; a grandmother dying of a stroke at 80 loses a few years.), the major afflictions of poverty and affluence do us in at roughly equal rates.

Childhood and maternal malnutrition, he estimates, erased 200 million life years in the year 2000. High blood pressure, cholesterol, obesity, and lack of physical activity erased 150 million life years. (There’s a long list of other causes, from war to tobacco.)

So at each end of the development ladder – from not enough to too much – we get into trouble.

So are we now locked into the “endless pursuit of unnecessary things?” In thinking about this warning from Adam Smith, I can’t help but feel bad for Thomas Malthus, who has taken all the heat from free-market champions of eternal growth over the years.

Maybe it was Adam Smith who was the first Malthusian prophet of doom.

edit to the last post

I realize that #5 and #9 (along with a long list of other things) are really just two parts of what could be called the "harmonization" of Beijing for the Olympics. No dirty restaurants, no spitting, and no unwanted people. As a Chinese article on the China Elections website says, "2008年的北京并不是真正的北京，而是为了开一个“平安与和谐”的奥运而被重新梳妆和打扮出来的有点扭扭捏捏、装腔作势的北京."

Basically: "The 2008 Beijing, is not the real Beijing, but instead is a Beijing that, in order to put on a 'safe and harmonious' Olympics, is being newly dressed up and putting on airs."

I'll be happy to return when Beijing is back to normal.

能否归回家？ Going home

So as most of you probably know, I'm heading back to the US in August. Yes, I know this means I'm missing the Olympics, but tickets for events are either impossible to get, too expensive, or for events I don't want to see anyway. That and thanks to Olympic security regulations, I need to process my next visa in the US. So to comfort myself for missing the Olympics (which I have always wanted to see live...really, I asked my parents if we could go to Atlanta in 1996), I made a top 10 list (in no particular order) of why I'm glad to be going back:

1. pollution

My biggest complaint, hands down, about Beijing is the air quality. Click the link to see what i'm talking about, though it has gotten much, much better this summer, thanks to temporary measures such as shutting down factories and curbing traffic.

2. subway security checks

They are checking bags at every subway stop (kind of....they sometimes force you to go through the back check, sometimes they don't), but it is causing nightmares (I had a blogpost with a picture of a crazy long line outside one of the stops but he took the picture down...sorry). It will only get worse when the Games actually come.

3. crowds

With 1.3 billion people (all of whom, I swear, live in Beijing), there are always crowds in China, but thanks to the restrictions that limit private cars, more people are taking public transportation. Thankfully this doesn't seem to have greatly affected my daily bus route. But still, the crowds are there.

4. 老外 foreigners

The city will be filled with foreigners who don't speak Chinese. No offense if you're one of them, but I'll be glad to miss the chaos.

5. no street food or cheap, dirty restaurants

Why can't the lady who sells fruit near the office sell me my mangoes in peace? I understand that most foreigners are used to higher levels of sanitary conditions, but I like the cheap food!

6. American television coverage of the Olympics

So the one channel on TV that I watch with any regularity is the sports channel and lets just say they play a lot of Olympic re-runs. Obviously CCTV is not an unbiased organization and all sports channels cheer for their own country, but you could at least give the other team credit (a 好球 here and there when deserved) for their achievements. This does seem to be improving – I watched an international volleyball tournament live recently and the announcers did say “nice shot,” etc for the other team.

7. shopping in peace

Please just let me look at what you have in your store/stall and decide what I want to buy. You bothering me is only going to make me less likely to buy from you.

8. bbq

Ever since the 4^th of July I've been craving bbq. I can't wait!

9. kicking out of migrant workers

Sure, migrant workers are more likely to stare at me, but they're also the ones that built all the Olympic facilities, and from a pure human rights perspective, they should be allowed to stay in Beijing.

10. China's inevitable 小题大做

People have all sorts of theories about what will go down come August 8. Mine is that small groups or individuals will, probably more than once, try to engage in public protest, and I'm pretty sure Beijing will overreact. I really hope such overreaction doesn't happen, but I'm not optimistic.

And obviously it will be great to see everyone. I realized that in the course of a little over a month, I will be in every city that I think of as “home;” this also includes every place, excluding one, where I've lived at least 3 months of my life. (LA, Pennsylvania, bay area...i will also probably be going to Boston and NYC for a day or two...let me know if you'll be in these places!)

PS. I have a few things I've wanted to post...both other people's articles and my own. I will do that ASAP.

Behind the reluctance of China and Africa to criticize Mugabe

So in celebration of the 4th of July, I'm posting what some would consider an "unpatriotic" article about the dubious morality of American involvement in Africa by Howard French, a NYtimes columnist who spent a lot of time there. Though I'm still craving bbq. also here.

By Howard French

SHANGHAI: For a crisis involving African despotism, the decibel readings in the West over Zimbabwe have reached almost unprecedented levels.

Beyond the din of condemnations of Robert Mugabe, that country's aging, power-obsessed tyrant, however, a great many questions have gone unexamined.

Western governments led by London and Washington look at Mugabe's rule and see such a clear-cut case of evil that they are at a loss to understand why the rest of Africa - or China, for that matter, a Security Council member with fast-deepening ties with the continent - doesn't rush to join in on their condemnation.

The Zimbabwe case should be more, though, than a tragedy for its own people, for it presents an invaluable opportunity to think about how differently the world can look from different vantage points. And far from an idle thought exercise, this might helpfully lead to a rethinking of diplomatic strategy in Africa and in other parts of the world.

As the second most important country in southern Africa, Zimbabwe, like that region itself, has long functioned like a kaleidoscope, serving up dramatically different perspectives to different viewers.

I was reminded of this fact by the recent news that a South African citizen of Chinese ancestry, Patrick Chong, had won a lawsuit enabling him to be legally considered black. The outcome was a triumph over a history of double discrimination. Like other ethnic Chinese, the plaintiff, who is chairman of the Chinese Association of South Africa, was denied many basic rights during the apartheid era, and he had also been denied the compensation won by the country's black majority with the demise of a system of legally enshrined racism.

As the perverse language of apartheid would have put it, Chong has now become an "honorary black."

What does this all have to do with Zimbabwe? Before Zimbabwe became a majority-ruled, independent country in 1980, and during the long years of apartheid in South Africa, both of those countries were treated with similar perversity as honorary members of the West.

While China was building the Tazara Railroad, to connect Zambia's mines to Tanzania's ports in order to loosen white-ruled South Africa's economic grip on the southern half of the continent, the United States and Britain were running diplomatic interference for apartheid rule in Pretoria.

Washington often went further, backing South African guerrilla proxies in places like Angola, prolonging devastating wars there and elsewhere, and staving off independence for South African-occupied Namibia in the name of fighting communism.

Short memories abound, but in Africa this is not yet ancient history. In 1987, while South Africa was actively pursuing a policy of sabotage against its neighbors, devastating vital infrastructure and supporting mass killers like the Renamo rebels in Mozambique, Washington reserved most of its indignation for "necklacing," a small-bore terror tactic practiced by blacks in South Africa. An amendment passed with overwhelming support in the U.S. Senate requiring southern African countries to condemn these lynchings or lose American aid.

Mugabe said it himself when he wrote in Foreign Affairs in 1987: "Political and material support of desperate bandit groups, dissidents and self-seeking, discredited individuals by a superpower like the United States is a prescription for chaos and instability in the international political system. Calling such a hodgepodge of individuals 'freedom fighters' does not make them any such thing."

Looking back, it isn't hard to conclude that China was in many ways closer to being on the right side of history in southern Africa than the United States, for all of America's vaunted attachment to freedom, democracy and human rights.

It is anything but clear that China has maintained that position today, as it pursues neo-mercantilist policies and abstains from pressuring Mugabe to end the campaign of terror and economic devastation waged against his own people.

Still, if one pauses to consider, it is relatively easy to grasp why African leaders might question the good faith behind the West's admirable sounding values and abstain from the chorus of condemnations, or why the Chinese might themselves be skeptical.

An African journalist wrote me this week, comparing the vociferous Western response to Mugabe to the customary silence that attends atrocities, political hijackings and despotism on the continent, especially where critical Western interests are in play. A former U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe had told her: "Everyone felt they had invested something in the success of Zimbabwe, so when it all began unraveling, everyone felt personally disappointed and let down."

This looks too easy by half, and it is hard to avoid the heretical question whether the vociferous response, especially by Britain, isn't somehow related to race?

Unlike most of the continent, Rhodesia, like South Africa and Kenya, were places where whites settled and became attached.

Ivory Coast, another erstwhile showcase, was allowed to cycle through stolen elections, coups, ethnic cleansing and civil war, registering scarcely a ripple on the global agenda.

But telling Africans they will be judged by how they line up on Zimbabwe is counterproductive for other reasons, too. The West's constant search for African leaders to anoint or vilify is resented on the continent, and its track record, moreover, is riddled with spots.

Paranoid African dictators look at the calls to denounce Mugabe and worry they might be next. The more democratically inclined know better. They see Washington's embrace of dictators in places like Equatorial Guinea, or even former enemies, like the robber baron former Marxists who run Angola, and see a pattern of highly selective outrage. Might the fact that these countries - to name but two - are swimming in oil have something to do with escaping the Mugabe treatment?

China looks at this inconsistency, too, and naturally suspects it is being discriminated against. The only African country that has drawn more Western critical fire than Zimbabwe recently is Sudan, for its genocidal campaign in Darfur. It's an emerging oil power, too, but unlike so many African kleptocracies, its product flows east, not west.

Press freedom contradictions and the trend towards transparency

Writing this article and reading about the recent Weng'an incident (also here) have given me a very mixed impression about the future of press freedom in China. Though this article is more positive. also here.

By Jennifer Haskell

While globalization's effects on the international media are certainly not new, 2008 has so far seen a dramatic increase in interaction between the Chinese and Western media. The Chinese are paying closer attention to the Western press than ever before and realizing that lack of government control does not mean it is always fair and balanced. And the West has also begun to read and comment on the Chinese press, though usually sticking to the official media, which only reinforces long-held assumptions about the state of journalism in China. The controversy following the Lhasa riots and the international leg of the torch relay highlights both trends.

In reality, the media situation in China is much more complicated, and some of these nuances became clear to the West following the Sichuan earthquake. In the beginning, Western press had nothing but praise for the openness and transparency with which China administered relief efforts. The government first tried to administer its usual controls on access to disaster sites, but when many local news outlets ignored the ban, a more open approach was embraced, as Chinese and foreign journalists were permitted to report directly from the scene, interviewing victims and disseminating information about the quake. Later in May, however, the central government once again tried to tighten its grip on the press, which the Western media reacted to with regret, cynicism, and criticism.

To the Chinese press, such fluctuations in openness are nothing new, as the role of the media is in a constant and complicated state of flux, subject to restriction at any time. Still, compared to ten years ago, the trend is clearly toward openness and developing "supervision by public opinion" (yulun jiandu), which is often used to refer to investigative journalism or the watchdog role of the media, and such hard-hitting reporting is more prominent than most in the West realize. Liu Yu, a CCTV employee, recently outlined three stages in the development of the media's role as a watchdog in Media magazine. His first stage – from 2001 to 2002 – saw the prominence of investigative television shows such as "Interview Focus" and "Investigative News." The second stage, from 2003 to August 2004, included the promotion of all aspects of investigative journalism, forming a "small high tide". During this period Southern Metropolis Daily broke the story of Sun Zhigang, a migrant worker who was detained and beaten to death for not carrying his Guangzhou residency permit. His case led to the revoking of the law under which Sun was held. This period also saw the outbreak of SARS as well as other cases of journalism bringing scandals to light.

The third stage, beginning in August 2004, saw a rise in editorials as an important source of social commentary and media challenging the status quo. Chang Ping's editorial earlier this year calling for less restrictions on the media did just that and ignited a firestorm of criticism online. While 2006 saw tighter restrictions on investigative reporting that focuses on corrupt officials, Caijing continued to publish such reports on economic issues and mining accidents became a big focus of journalistic investigation.

Despite restrictions that are both self and government imposed, media that pushes the envelope and challenges the status quo continues to thrive, with Caijing and the Southern Media Group (which publishes the Southern Metropolis Daily and Southern Weekend as well as other publications) at the forefront. Caijing recently published an extensive investigative piece on the quality of school construction in Sichuan, despite official orders to drop the issue. Southern Media Group publications, in addition to being the home of controversial editor Chang Ping, broke the story earlier this year of the fraud of Nanjie village and has provided consistently good coverage of the earthquake. Both publications have strategies for evading government control and punishment, as described in a recent NPR report on journalism in China. Caijing often employs scientific or legal jargon to mask its hard-hitting reports, and its international reputation also helps protect it against government interference. The Southern Metropolis Daily has had a more tumultuous history, angering local officials with its story on Sun Zhigang, which led to the jailing of its editor, and has since learned to do its investigative reporting in other provinces. Still, the paper often has to preemptively fire its own editors to avoid trouble.

Chinese leadership is not quite certain how to deal with the changing nature of the domestic and international media environment. Lessons have been learned from the handling of the controversy following the Lhasa riots as well as the aftermath of the earthquake, but it is not clear that this will necessarily lead to more openness. In a speech marking the 60th anniversary of the People's Daily, Hu Jintao acknowledged the need for the Party's media to adapt to the times and effectively use new methods to propagate its message and compete with both the much more popular commercial media and the international media. He notes the media's success after the earthquake in inspiring the people's confidence and winning praise both domestically and internationally, but credits this success with the timeliness and thoroughness of reporting, not mentioning openness or transparency. Additionally, Hu only refers to "supervision of public opinion" once, among a long list of things that need to be done in the new media environment. Instead, he emphasizes the Party's media's role in the "guidance of public opinion" (yulun yindao), which he mentions 9 times. The rhetoric of President Hu's speech definitely indicates a recognition of the need to change but no suggestion that such change will lead to more media freedom and less control. (China Media Project has an in depth analysis of the speech).

Still, there is only so much the CCP can do to control the flow of information or public opinion. A large part of the change in the global media environment comes from the Internet, where Chinese citizens can easily access Western media like the New York Times or CNN; even if the site is blocked, proxy servers are commonplace. And that's exactly what Chinese netizens did following the Lhasa riots – went to Western sources for information as domestic media did not originally report on the incident, and the controversy that followed forced the Chinese press to at least address the issue. Posts on BBS forums and blogs also often precede reporting in the traditional press. The recent Weng'an riots are a perfect example of how online commentary and Western reporting on the incident forced Xinhua to give a much more detailed report than its original four sentence press release. Furthermore, online, anything and everything is talked about and all opinions are aired, even if having an unpopular viewpoint leads to harsh criticism by the majority. Even if controversial posts are often taken down, the discussion is still occurring, and online media are playing an increasingly important role in China, for better or for worse (for worse being the vociferousness of fervent nationalists). Hu certainly understands these trends; while at the People's Daily, he briefly chatted with netizens, discussing his own online habits. Yet, it remains to be seen how much free rein the CCP will continue to give both traditional and new media outlets.

In his speech, Hu also notes that the prevailing attitude on culture and media remains that the "West is strong, China is weak." An editorial in Southern Weekend by Xiao Shu agrees that the Chinese media needs to mature in order to both change this attitude and increase China's soft power. He argues that the reporting on the earthquake demonstrated that the Chinese press has the capability of rising to the occasion but in order to develop needs more freedom in which to operate as well as more market competition. Chang Ping had made a similar argument – that in order to avoid inaccurate reports and counteract bias, China needs a free and open reporting environment; only then can the truth come out.

However, Chinese leaders do see a role for "supervision by public opinion," specifically in fighting corruption. In addition to setting up a hotline for monitoring government officials, the CCP Central Committee's five year anti-corruption plan also calls on the media to play a larger role in supervising party members. A Beijing Youth Daily article called on officials to accept scrutiny and oversight by the press, as it can help them perform their jobs better; it also instructed the media to operate in a scientific, legal, and constructive manner. Liu Yu also calls on the press to be responsible in its investigations. Several media outlets are calling for an open account of what happened in Weng'an, where citizens believe the government is covering up a rape and murder; they are doing their job of "supervision by public opinion," and acting as a watchdog, but will the government respond positively? This remains to be seen.

Still, even if they have to deal with capricious crackdowns, both online and traditional media continue to push the boundaries of what is acceptable. When one goes beyond the media directly controlled by the CCP, it becomes obvious that while development and growth is needed and while there are clear boundaries, the press is beginning to step into its role of "supervision by public opinion," investigating, bringing scandals to light, and even questioning the government. It may not be occurring as rapidly as many in the West would like, but the trend is most definitely towards openness and freedom of the press.

看世界 Seeing the world

New York Times foreign correspondent in Shanghai, Howard French, wrote a "going away" (or "going home") article in the International Herald Tribune, as he is returning to the US after 3 decades of reporting from abroad. The last paragraph really struck me:

"Three decades ago, I set out on a journey desiring the world, and though one is humbled to know how much there is to be seen, and how little any one person can understand, there is little room for disappointment."

I also have a desire to see and, more importantly, understand the world. While my chosen career path means that I probably will not see as many places as French has, I will always be tempted to set off one day to wonder around the world. But more importantly, I desire that understanding of how people from vastly different backgrounds think about and view important issues and the world around them.

Re-organization

I'm in the mood for re-organizing, maybe because I've been re-organizing my life a bit recently. I just moved all of my things across town and am officially living with Zi. My visa situation seems to be working itself out, as I should have one until the end of July and then another visa beginning in September (yes that does mean I will be spending August back in the states). I'm working full time at BCPR until the end of July and then beginning in the fall, I will be working there as well as teaching at a new university.

Recently, a lot of what I've written on here has been politics and/or China related, and really that's what I enjoy writing about. I will continue to throw in personal stories and/or anecdotes whenever I feel like it. Because I have both articles and translations that have gone up on the NGO's website, I will also post those on here (both ones that are already up and ones that I write in the future). I also plan to post really, really good/interesting/relevant things that are written on the same topics either by my colleagues or by others (if you're looking for things to read online that are just good or really good, get google reader and add me as a friend. I share lots of news articles on there. Or ask me for blog recommendations). I've already added a bunch of posts in chronological order (meaning that the earliest ones are father down on the page...or see the list on the side).

To deal with all of this craziness, I now have labels for the types of posts (on blogspot), and they should be self-explanatory. As of right now, I'm not sure how much of this I will be cross-posting on facebook, and blogspot seems to be on the good side of the great-almighty censor (knock on wood). As always, I welcome any and all comments~

In defense of Ding Gang

One of my colleagues in the US (really) takes on a Washington Post commentator. It's a very harsh critique, though much of it is deserved. also here.

What is wrong with Edward Cody's article?

By Joseph Miller

Directly following the international community’s coverage of the Tibetan protests and the skirmishes following the Olympic torch, a bellicose and unexpected surge of protest arose from the Chinese people. On the web and on the pavement, citizens of the People’s Republic of China and overseas Chinese decried the western media for being biased and distorted. The most commonly entertained explanation for this fierce outpouring was twofold: a warped vision of the West and Tibet by Chinese government propaganda and a rising irrational nationalist feeling. But after reading the Washington Post’s, “In China, Fascination With Obama's Skin Color”, an analysis by Edward Cody of a Chinese article on the U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama, I think its time we considered that the Chinese might be right about the Western Media, or at least Mr. Cody.

The Chinese article in question is called “The Obama Phenomenon” by Ding Gang (to read the English version, click here; to read the Chinese version, click here), and was printed after Obama’s victory over Hillary Clinton to become the Democratic nominee. As for The Post’s bias, it is so pervasive in the article that one is at a loss over where to begin, as if surveying a totaled car of an article. But why not start with the title, “In China, Fascination with Obama's Skin Color”. Fascination? Ding Gang refers to Obama’s skin color in a purely academic manner, analyzing its likely affect on Americans. If one has read a multitude of Chinese articles on Barack Obama (this article only cites one) and consistently found that skin color was mentioned out of context of a larger American societal debate, one might begin to claim China was indeed fascinated by Obama’s skin. Mr. Cody seems to think it is ample to make this claim for 1.3 billion people based on the first sentence of Ding Gang’s article, which (according to Mr. Cody’s article) states that Obama’s skin color was the biggest focal point of the primary. Never mind the fact that this is an awfully strong translation of Ding Gang’s opening sentence, which can be read as saying, “Obama’s skin color has been one of the most observed aspects of this year’s American presidential race.”. The very next paragraph talks about Obama’s promise of change. “The Obama Phenomenon” extols how this presidential candidate is hugely talented and a representation of the American dream. Fascinated with skin color? It certainly doesn’t appear that way; multiple reasons are given for Obama’s appeal.

This is not to say that Ding Gang’s article doesn’t have a bias of its own. It is an extremely critical and cynical article, with what is very blunt and racially driven rhetoric. Chinese society may indeed have a rather blunt approach to the discussion of race, but the accusation that the U.S. is a nation in the Anglo-Saxon Protestant mold is an oversimplification to say the least. America is a multicultural and religiously pluralistic society; Anglo-Saxons make up only a small section of the white population (there are large Asian, Hispanic, as well as African American minorities) and Catholics outnumber any single Protestant denomination. In terms of Ding Gang’s analysis of Obama’s promise of change, he seems to be making the case that elections in the U.S. do not have a large influence. He states that Obama may represent change, but actually is in line with mainstream U.S. values and can do very little when he enters office. In addition, he compares the election between John McCain and Barack Obama as changing actors on a stage, reinforcing the idea that U.S. elections are a sham. Of course, because Ding Gang is a writer for the People’s Daily (a government supported newspaper) it might be in his interests to state that elections fail to change the government’s situation. To be as cynical as Ding Gang is a bit ridiculous. Hardly a mere actor, the U.S. president is a legislative, executive, and symbolic force. Barack Obama, with a Democratic Party-controlled Congress in tow, could make many real changes to U.S. military, economic, and trade policies. As a head of state, he could be a powerful, transformative symbol of a multicultural society. If he manages to have a successful presidency, he might forever dispel the notions of racial inferiority. This being said, Edward Cody’s critique of Ding Gang is simply flawed.

Perhaps one of the most mirthfully ridiculous claims Cody makes is in his first paragraph. He states: “America may be discussing whether Barack Obama is tough enough to field a 3 a.m. phone call, but for the Chinese Communist Party's official newspaper, the real issue is his race.” Having read Ding Gang’s article, it is baffling that Cody would write such a sentence considering that Ding Gang does discuss whether American’s think Obama is tough enough to answer the infamous 3 A.M. phone call. Ding Gang writes, “To borrow from the Hillary and Obama campaign’s advertisements, perhaps what may in the end decide people’s vote is the frame of mind, “Imagine its 3:00 A.M. at the White House and the red phone is answered; if the person answering is McCain, it would be more reassuring.”

It’s clear that Mr. Cody has no grasp of “The Obama Phenomenon” or the Chinese view in general. In any translation of a Chinese article that discusses skin color one is immediately struck by how the Chinese language uses the terms “black people”, “white people”, and skin color. The Chinese are not delicate about racial features, and as of yet haven’t taken on the politically correct language that many in the U.S. expect. Ding Gang’s article is no exception. He is blunt about the issue of race and gives a very straightforward argument on how Obama relates to American society and African Americans in general. However, can one truly say that the WASP driven culture, assimilation, and Obama’s relation to the African American community are settled issues? It likewise seems ridiculous to use Ding Gang’s article to paint him and the entire Chinese people as “fascinated” with skin color.

Mr. Cody uses a broad brush indeed. It’s quite clear by the third paragraph that he is using Ding Gang’s article to attack China on its treatment of Tibetans, Uighurs, and minorities in general. In a particularly snide remark, he states, “The editorial sought to explain that Obama's breakthrough should not be understood as a demonstration that race relations have crossed a threshold in the United States that China has yet to approach.” While it is true Ding Gang posited that one of the biggest factors in the primary was Obama’s skin color, Mr. Cody never really made an argument against that idea. Instead, he decided to use the painfully weak method of arguing against a foreign reporter by attacking him for the policies of a government in which he had no say, and have nothing to do with Ding Gangs article.

Perhaps more foul is Cody’s implication that Ding Gang is not a real person: “Ding Gang, a name frequently assigned to important analyses in a publication that plays the role of party bulletin board. Chinese journalists said they believe it is a pen name used by senior editors or other party propaganda officials conveying an official point of view.” In actuality, Ding Gang is the associate director of the International Department of The People’s Daily and “The Obama Phenomenon” appeared in its overseas edition. That Mr. Cody would make such an egregious error as calling the author’s existence into question is shocking, but as it appears he failed to do so much as read Ding Gang’s article it’s hard to imagine Mr. Cody thoroughly inquiring into fallacious hearsay regarding the Chinese writer.

In the West we tend to believe that we are privy to the most accurate press in the world; free of bias and factually accurate. But with China bashing inaccurate articles like, “In China, Fascination with Obama's Skin Color”, it is time we had a look at what newspapers and 24 hour news/entertainment channels are calling news. For an article that so distorts a Chinese author’s message (as well as claiming he isn’t real) to lash out against the Chinese government is reprehensible, especially since the original is not readily readable by the average Washington Post consumer. The blatant inability to have a coherent argument, accurately represent a foreign article, do basic fact checking, and leave out anti-Chinese sentiment makes Edward Cody and the Washington Post resemble a ridiculous screed. How ridiculous do the claims that China’s media is censored and useless appear when the Washington Post uses their freedom of speech to run a tabloid and call it news?